== 2026-08-24 ==

=== Compiling an orignal 1993 gopher client in 2026 ===

I was digging through the files at the Cyber Vanguard gopher site
found a collection of code for various gopher clients, for various
platforms.

Of the Unix ones I found BBGopher[0] and downloaded the tarball to
attempt to compile a working copy 33 years after it was written.

And blow me... it works! Mostly.

I did a few minor tweaks to some #DEFINE statements to suit the
file paths etc. and it compiles - lots of warnings rush past up the
screen as it goes, but nothing fatal. And I'm left with a workable
Gopher Client for reading simple text-only gopher pages.

After reading a text document it offers the option to save (or
email) a copy. Saving works. I doubt emailing will - I don't have
sendmail (or any other MTA).

So far so good.

The program has a "bookmarks" function  - save the current site to
a bookmark file. This doesn't work.

Pressing "b" to bookmark gives an instant Segmentation Fault.

Another thing that doesn't work is the behaviour with other
file-types. IMG, BIN etc. are detected okay - they appear
correctly on the rendered menu - but trying to select/download
leads to some sort of error.

The bookmark issue is intriguing and I think I should use it as a
learning opportunity.

Last year I tried to teach myself C. I got several books and worked
through them, doing all the assignments, learning about pointers
and string arrays, and structs and linked-lists and malloc and
memory leaks...

And I've fogotten it all already. I still have all the code I wrote
doing the various exercises, so I can look back and refresh my
memory. 

One thing that always prevents me really getting to grips with
coding is having a worthwhile "real" project. It's all rather
abstract and meaningless unless you have a useful outcome in mind,
and it's not too far beyond your current level of understanding.

Looking at the source code for BBGopher (it's a single .c file) I
can see much that I recognise. And much that I don't.

I think I'll try to "fix" it. To remove the "email" option and to
sort out the Seg Fault and the problems with correctly handling
other file types.

I'll need to get my books out and my thinking cap on.



**************** Update.... later the same day *****************

I fixed the Bookmark issue...

missing #includes - <stdlib.h> and <string.h>

That allows bookmarks to be saved and retrieved.

Then the issue with saving non-text files.... whenever I tried to
save a type 9 (BIN) or type 5 (DOS) the prog. immediately seg
faulted.

This led me to dig into the way it works - and I found a missing
variable declaration in the "GetFile()" function!

	char* type

was all it took.

Then I looked at the "unsupported" files - types that bbgopher
wouldn't download. These were just type g (GIF) and type I (PIC)

I tweaked the array that decides if a filetype is "supported" and
added two more cases to the switch statement that decides what to
do with a chosen selector.

Then I got rid of the Mail function - commented out one function
and removed a few other bits & pieces.

Job Done.

It's quite a nice little client. And it's period-correct for my
trip back to 1993!

I've saved a tar-ball with the working source[1]


[0]: gopher://cyber.dabamos.de/1/gopher/clients/Unix/BBGopher/
[1]: gopher://g4slv.cloud/5/media/archive_files/bbgopher_2026.tar