1d97 Here's some general information about gopher. The software is available via anonymous ftp from boombox.micro.umn.edu. ------------------------------ Suggested Books There is a chapter about Gopher in each of the suggested books. These books are also good guides to the Internet. "The Whole INTERNET User's Guide and Catalog" by Ed Krol published by: O'Reilley & Associates, Inc; ISBN: 1-56592-025-2. "The Internet Passport: NorthWestNet's Guide to Our World Online" by Jonathan Kochmer and NorthWestNet. published by: NorthWestNet, Bellevue, WA. 1993. 516 pp. ISBN: 0-9635281-0-6. Contact info: passport@nwnet.net, or (206) 562-3000 "Internet: Getting Started" by April Marine, Susan Kirkpatrick, Vivian Neou, Carol Ward published by: Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1993. ISBN: 0-13-327933-2 ------------------------------ General Information Internet Gopher distributed document search and retrieval system Microcomputer and Workstation Networks Center University of Minnesota What is internet Gopher? Internet Gopher is a distributed document search and retrieval system. It combines features of both electronic bulletin board services and fully indexed databases. The protocol and software follows a client-server model, and permits users on a heterogeneous mix of desktop systems to browse, search, and retrieve documents residing on multiple distributed server machines. Internet Gopher was developed by the Microcomputer Center at the University of Minnesota and may be freely distributed. What Information is Available via Gopher? A lot of very diverse information is stored on Gopher servers, both at the University of Minnesota campus and out on the Internet. We have computer documentation, phone books, news, weather, library databases, books, recipes, etc. We use Gopher at the Microcomputer Helpline to quickly answer questions using our large user support database. In addition to our own information, we have over 6000 information items from various hardware and software vendors. While Gopher is a good tool for our own internal use, anyone may use it. This means fewer calls to our helpline, resulting in better, faster service. The Gopher system can keep track of campus phone book servers. Currently you can search campus phone books for some seventeen University Campuses. Besides browsing and searching files and directories on a network of Gopher servers, users can obtain information from Archie servers, WAIS (Wide Area Information Service) servers, and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers without leaving the familiar, simple Gopher user interface. Quite a bit of news is accessible via Gopher. Two campus newspapers: The Minnesota Daily and The Daily Texan are on line and searchable. National Weather Forecasts for the entire nation are also available. For Clarinet subscribers we provide a fully indexed UPI news feed. You can even browse USENET news using Gopher if you wish. The electronic books published by the Gutenberg Project are available in Gopher. These include classics such as Moby Dick and reference works such as the CIA World Fact Book, The Hacker's Dictionary and the Periodic Table of the Elements are available too. Gopher users can also get at information that is only accessible on terminal based information systems. Gopher can stores links to these sites. A telnet session to many libraries and information servers can be started by selecting the appropriate source in Gopher. On the more whimsical side, humor, recipes, jokes, etc. are also available. There's a wide variety of data, with more coming on-line all the time from a multitude of sites on the Internet. Browsing through information located in Sweden is as easy as browsing information residing on a computer in the same room as you. How does it work? Information is stored on multiple servers, connected on a network. This allows for capacity to be added to the system in small, inexpensive increments. It also allows the Gopher system to cross institutional boundaries, since other servers can be "linked" into the system easily. Large indexes can be spread over multiple servers, resulting in significant speedups. Clients communicate with servers using TCP/IP. Macintosh, PC, NeXT, X, VAX/VMS, IBM VM/CMS or Unix Terminal clients can access the Gopher system. The client connects with a local primary (or "root") gopher server which is an entry point into the Gopher server system. The primary server has links to other Gopher servers. Departments or organizations can run their own primary servers, consequently there can be many different entry points into the Gopher system. This allows a certain amount of freedom in organizing the information to reflect local needs. At the initial connection, the primary server sends back a listing of the objects in its top level directory. These objects can be: Directories, Text Files, CSO Phone Books, Search Engines, References to Telnet based information services Each object has associated with it a user-displayable title, a unique "selector string", a hostname, and a port number. The client presents the user with the list of titles, and lets them make a selection. The user does not have to remember hostnames, ports, or selector strings. The client takes care of this. After the user makes a selection, the client contacts the given host at the given port and sends the selector string associated with the object. If the object was a directory, the client requests the directory listing; if a file, the client requests the file contents; if a search-service, the client first finds out what words to search for and then submits the search criteria to the index server. Obtaining Gopher software. Client software is available for Macintosh, DOS-based machines, generic curses-based UNIX, X, NeXT (browser style interface), VM/CMS, and VAX/VMS. Server software is available for Macintosh, UNIX, IBM VM/CMS, and VAX/VMS; a server should soon be completed for DOS machines. Full-text search server software is available for generic UNIX (based on the public domain WAIS search engine) and for NeXT (using their native indexing libraries). Full-text search servers should soon be completed for Macintosh. All software is available via anonymous ftp (or via Gopher) from boombox.micro.umn.edu The internet Gopher development team can be reached via e-mail at: . If you wish to be added to the Gopher-News mailing list, send e-mail to: Other gopher concerns are often discussed in the USENET newsgroup: comp.infosystems.gopher. Mark P. McCahill University of Minnesota Computer & Information Services room 125 Shepherd Labs mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu 100 Union Street SE 612 625 1300 (voice) Mpls., MN 55455 612 625 6817 (fax) Additional Phoenix College Information: On your VAX account, at the "$" prompt type: GOPHER PC Wait a moment and you will see the main menu. Have fun... . 0