cgo - a terminal gopher client

Summary

cgo is a UNIX/Linux terminal based gopher client. It has no other dependencies than libc and some syscalls. It should run on every VT100 compatible terminal. To show media like images, music or webpages it relies on external programs you can specify.

What does cgo mean?

cgo means more or less, the "c go"pher client. And c could stand for C (the programming language), colorful or console. You may choose one of the meanings or propose other :) (but please not crappy!)

How to install

Grab the source code, open cgo.c and adjust the external programs to your needs. You can also change the default gopherhole where cgo connects on startup without any parameters (e.g. you can tell cgo to connect directly to some Veronica search engine). And if you don't like the default colors, you're able to change them also here. If you're done with changing the defaults, just "make" the final binary.

Parameters

In case you omit all parameters cgo will show you the default gopherhole specified in the source file.

• -H show usage
• -v print version
• gopher URI opens the given gopher URI

Usage

When "surfing" in the gopherspace cgo only presents you with directory listings. Every selector is preceeded with two ascii chars, or three if we run out of selectors in the range 'aa', 'ab' ... 'zz'. By typing in these chars cgo will jump to the given selector. Every time you jump to another directory listing cgo generates a history entry (like every browser). To show other media cgo uses external programs to present it (e.g. less, display, mplayer, firefox). The following commands are understood by cgo:

• ? help
• < jump back in history
• * reload directory
• [link] show / jump to selector
• .[link] download selector
• H show history
• H[link] jump to specified history item
• G[URI] jumps right to the specified gopher URI
• B show bookmarks
• B[link] jump to specified bookmark item

[link] stands for the two (or three) colored letters in front of selectors.

Configuration

cgo reads /etc/cgorc and then $(HOME)/.cgorc for defaults. If both files are missing, hardcoded defaults will be used. Following configuration keys are recognized by cgo:

• start_uri the gopher URI which is displayed at start
• cmd_text command to show text files
• cmd_browser command to HTML links
• cmd_image command to show images
• cmd_player command to play audio files
• color_prompt ANSI color sequence for the prompt
• color_selector ANSI color sequence for selectors
• verbose If not "false" or "off" it will show messages like "downloading" / "executing" when downloading a selector
• bookmarkN configure bookmarks

Todo

• list is empty :D

Bugs

• none I'm aware of :)

Feel free to use this small gopher client. I hope you'll find it as useful as I do. Send me comments or patches if you like. I would appreciate it.