Re: [dev] Suckless operating system

On 15 Jun 2010, at 12:48, Nick wrote:

> Quoth Ethan Grammatikidis:
>> On 15 Jun 2010, at 11:24, Nick wrote:
>>> Because that way you can do content negotiation. Granted, that isn't
>>> much used today,
>>
>> Why not? With more international businesses than ever on the web and
>> the internet spread further over the globe than ever before, and with
>> content negotiation having been around for such a long time, why is
>> it
>> hardly used? Perhaps because it sucks?
>
> I always presumed it was because web browsers never really gave it a
> meaningful interface. Same, for that matter, with HTTP basic
> authentication.

The interface for language content negotiation is straightforward and
meaningful, but nobody uses even that.

>
>>> and it would make sense to make content-type
>>> optional, but I like the idea of content negotiation. Being able to
>>> e.g. get the original markdown for the content of a page, without
>>> the HTML crap, navigation etc, would be really nice in a lot of
>>> cases.
>>
>> Maybe, but I doubt the majority of web designers would like you
>> looking at their source, as simple as it might be, and the likelihood
>> of big businesses letting you get at their web page sources seems
>> very
>> low. Maybe I'm just terminally cynical.
>
> Sigh, no, you're largely right. Though wikipedia or some of the more
> open blog engines are examples where this is less likely to be true.
>
>>> I get the impression the W3C expected content negotiation to
>>> be used a lot more when they wrote the HTTP 1.1 spec.
>>
>> Erm, yeah. The W3C seems to have expected a lot of things would be
>> practical and useful.
>
> Well, I prefer the W3C's vision of the web to the one designers and
> marketers have created.

I don't. :) There are plenty of worthless shinyshit marketing sites,
of course, but sites which actually sell you a wide range of products
make sure you can find the products you want AND specifications on them.

On w3.org by contrast the page on the cgi standard has nothing but
dead links and references to an obsolete web server. I was searching
for the CGI standard the other day, and couldn't find it _anywhere_.
I've not generally found navigating w3.org too easy, it's only all
right when you already know where stuff is.

>
> Incidentally, can anyone recommend a good gopher client? I missed it
> the first time 'round, and I'd be curious to see a different
> paradigm of web type thing.

I'm curious too. I've only ever used a somewhat sucky web gateway to
access gopher, and that only once.

-- 
Complexity is not a function of the number of features. Some features  
exist only because complexity was _removed_ from the underlying system.