Proxying

[colecmac at protonmail.com]

> If nothing else, I think there's a small, useful role for a very simple
> caching proxy which just maintains an in-memory cache of everything
> visited which is valid for, say, five minutes. The reason this is
> useful is that navigating Gemini capsules often involves extensive use
> of the "back button" (and, at least for me on AV-98, the "up" command,
> which gets you from example.com/foo/bar/baz to to example.com/foo/bar/
> even in the lack of an explicit link, and the "root" command, which gets
> you from example.com/foo/bar/baz to to example.com), which often entails
> loading the same page repeatedly in a relatively short window of time.
> A very simple dumb local cache would cut down on transactions for this.

I think this is often best relegated to the client, but I see how it's nice
for the client not to have to worry about it, and to have this other proxy instead.
I was originally picturing something longer lived, so that it would still be
useful along with any caches the client already has, but I'm not sure how much
sense that makes.

> For people like me who often read something in Gemini/Gopherspace, then
> want to reference a few days later but cannot remember where they read
> it, a proxy which maintained full-text search of everything visited in
> the past month or so would be super handy, but I have no idea how to
> build such a thing.

Me neither, but that definitely seems cool. I'm sure Natpen would have an
idea on how to do this :). It's also a nice way to keep history for clients
that don't do that (all of them?). The full text search also doubles as an
archive of all the sites you visit.


makeworld