This is the first time I heard about Gopher.
Why it's a terrible protocol?
Why it's a terrible protocol?
http://www.wumpus-cave.net/2013/10/27/why-gopher-is-awful/
Once I did a little research and wrote it all out, Gopher actually came out worse than I thought. Even if it were brought up to Gopher+ specifications (which haven't been implemented by anyone in 20 years), it would still be way behind HTTP/1.1 in terms of fixing design flaws.
And if the TCP sliding window is an issue for you, why not fix TCP?
Why should the server send any kind of header?
Doesn't TCP do checksums, already?
Fix sliding window? I don't think you understand TCP. This is an optimization to TCP to prevent the need to ACK every packet. It means fewer bytes on the wire and less CPU load for TCP processing, while also maintaining a respectable degree of reliability.
TCP checksums are not sufficient for data streams of more than a few kB.
Let's be honest, you just need to know how are you going to deal with the file, not what kind of file it is.
You need something along the lines of - this resource is readable text - this resource is binary data - this resource is an image
How you are going to deal with it is a function of what kind of file it is, so to know the former you need to know the latter. The internet Media Type system is far from perfect, but much better.
> You need something along the lines of - this resource is readable text - this resource is binary data - this resource is an image
If that was really all you needed, you wouldn't need the subtypes in the internet Media Type system, while experience in the real world has shown that you do need that information.