[ih] FTP Design

[Tony Finch]

Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net> wrote:
>
> I'm going to claim that the innovations in the URL construct were:
>
>    1.  extensible declaration of service mechanism (http, ftp, ...)
>
>    2.  rigid requirement for domain name, to specify the place for evaluating
> the rest of the string
>
>    3.  essentially no constrains on the rest of the string.

But, gopher's links had all of those except the first.

What multiprotocol user agents were there before the www?

A couple of points I want to agree with and expand on:

> However it was easier to set up a gopher site than a web site, because the web
> required specialized documents while gopher ran on text.  There was serious
> competition between the two.

It took a few years before the web became a hypermedia system (embedded
images and so forth) which was when it became really distinct from its
predecessors. It also helped that web browsers were good gopher clients.
And there were the botched commercialization attempts by the web's
competitors.

> Another major design difference was that gopher provided no useful information
> until you reached the leaf, whereas the web could produce an 'interesting'
> document with every click.  That is, the Web permitted a far sexier
> experience, of course.

The difference between hypertext/hypermedia and a catalogue.

Tony.
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