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from the insert-oblig-caddyshack-reference dept.
For many people, the world wide web is synonymous with the Internet. While the HTTP protocol dominates the modern Internet, many protocols obsolete, obscure and well known make up the Internet.
One of the more stubborn protocols is Gopher. Introduced in 1991 (the same year as HTTP), Gopher, like the web, is document-centric.
By about 1990, information on the Internet was expanding rapidly enough that it needed more organization and a better search capability. In 1991 researchers at the University of Minnesota developed the Gopher protocol in an attempt to provide some of that organization. Gopher provides a hierarchical text-based menu system to organize the contents of a data repository (which eventually came to be called "gopherholes").
https://prgmr.com/blog/gopher/2018/08/23/gopher.html
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday August 28 2018, @03:05PM (2 children)
Yea, OS/2 was similar, saving the file type as an Extended Attribute (xttr) along with whatever program a data file was associated with, so one jpeg would open one program when double clicked and another jpeg could open a different program, and the association could be changed by right clicking and opening the settings (properties later). The main difference was that, starting out as a DOS replacement and continuing to happily run DOS or Win 3.1 programs meant that the extension was the fallback and users were used to using file extensions so when a program had no association, it usually had a relevant extension.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 28 2018, @03:25PM (1 child)
Mac has two attributes of a directory entry: "type" and "creator". Type indicated how to interpret the bytes in (the data fork) of the file. Creator indicated what application to launch. Multiple apps might be able to read a JPEG. Double clicking one JPEG file would open it in Photoshop, but double clicking another JPEG file might open it in a Viewer app. This would not be surprising. The first JPEG file would have a "Photoshop Jpeg" icon, while the other JPEG file would have the "Viewer Jpeg" icon. The combination of type-creator determined the icon for a file. Each app which has a 'creator' value, furnishes a list of the types it can open along with an icon for that type, for this particular application.
Another difference is Mac did not have drive letters. It did not have pathnames. Nor file extensions. But a file could have more than just the "data" in it (the data fork). A file could also have a database of "resources" that could be retrieved by resource type and resource id. So I could fetch 'ICON' 128 from a file's resources. Or fetch 'TEXT' 199, or 'CODE' 120, etc. An app had no data fork (until PowerPC) and only had resources. The code segments of an app were resources, starting from CODE id zero. Developers could make up arbitrary four character resource types, and there was sort of a central registry. This was all released in 1984.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @03:10PM
Macintosh absolutely had pathnames. They used a colon for a separator instead of a slash, and started with the name of the HD (e.g., "Macintosh HD:System Folder:Finder"). They were used internally, not frequently visible to the user, but they were there.