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This section is from the document '/news-archives/comp/infosystems/gopher/general'.
From alt.gopher Tue May 5 18:20:36 1992
Status: O
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From: isca@umaxa.weeg.uiowa.edu (Iowa Student Computer Association)
Date: 5 May 92 20:57:21 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.gopher
Subject: Panda
Panda is a program being developed at the University of Iowa for
campus network use. The eventual goal is to provide a common,
user-friendly, secure front end for most internet services (FTP,
Gopher, UseNet, DOC (a BBS server), mail, talk, write) so that the
average user can sit down at a terminal/home PC and start off using
the internet without learning Unix. In addition, since the
communications will be secure, it will be a good client to be used in a
broadcast network situation (for example, personal Macs on an
ethernet network in a dorm). Instead of making servers that speak gopher
out one side and other services out the other, we're working on making
the client be able to speak to the servers directly, as well as a
programming language so that the client can "download" a program to
speak to a brand new server (a simple scripting language, really).
Right now, we've taken the "gopher" program and modified both
the client ("panda") and the server ("pgopherd") heavily. We liked the
gopher client look (for curses), so we used that as our launching point
for the project.
In its current form, Panda is just a souped up gopher client, but by
fall we should have many of the above services up and running. The
Panda client will *always* speak gopher, so people currently using
gopher may be interested in some of the changes we've done to the
Panda client.
If you'd like to give Panda a try, telnet to "panda.uiowa.edu" and
follow the prompts (if all you have is rlogin, use the account name
"panda" on that machine).
We're putting up both halves of Panda, as well as a few other
utilities, up for anonymous FTP from chop.isca.uiowa.edu, *BUT* it is
in a very rough form. The documentation is incomplete, and
although both sides have been ported to an Encore Multi-Max, a
NeXT, and an Apollo (DOMAIN), we make no porting assurances. In
other words, at this point you're on your own. We apologize and will
be working to make it smoother as time permits.
What follows is a brief listing of the extensions to the basic gopher
stuff whenever we grabbed it:
Client enhancements:
Still communicates with all other gopher servers, transparently to
the user.
Ability to add informational text to the tops of menus. This makes
menus look a *lot* nicer and are much more readable than plain
menus. See the sample screen later in this note.
Command-Line interface. This allows for more options than the
hot-key version (as our work with ISCABBS has taught us), which
will be particularly important as more services are added.
Screen updates have been changed slightly to work better over a
slow-modem link.
Compu$erve-style "go commands" are supported. You can type "go
movies" and go directly to the local movie listing without wading
through the menus. These aliases are globals to the entire campus,
so they require no setup by the user. Newpaper articles sometimes
include what the "go shortcut" is on Panda for more information.
Users can "yank" an option, which adds it to their own personal
main menu. This is a lot like the bookmark on the PC client.
A longer form of help that allows for an online reference guide
(vaguely hypertextish).
The ability to support remote printing, using the pgopherd server.
This allows the user to select a printer froma list of available
printing locations, and currently supports three non-connected
printing systems at the University of Iowa. The whole printing thing
is really slick....
Little things, like minor improvements to CSO, a "top" command,
dynamic one-line help, and so on.
Server Enhancements:
Menu command language changes (described below).
Ability to update/create files from a remote location, including
flexible password validation.
Ability to resolve the shortcuts for the "go" command.
Ability to accept a file remotely and execute a command with the
input file (which is how we do printing).
We enhanced an old version of gopher to make it do *exactly* what
we wanted, in terms of how our directories are laid out. Although
they are still around, side files will not be supported in the future,
and we're only going to support one way of setting up pgopherd
servers, which is the way we've found easiest. Sorry.
The current way of getting menu pages by a directory listing of a
directory is still supported, but that doesn't work well: the order is
based on when the file was created and other files deleted, you end
up with really long file names, your file names have wonky
characters in them, and so on. Although we still support it, and will
continue to do so, this is not the recommended way.
The specification of an "order" was cumbersome, and we didn't
add it to our server and have no plans to do so.
Instead, we expanded the capabilities of the "link" file (the ones
which are currently read as files beginning with a dot) to be able to
work around all of our above problems. We call these files "Menu
Definition Files" (MDF), and to "read a file as an MDF" means totry to
parse the contents and match it to the MDF format, and spit out a
gopher menu to the client.
1) If a directory is named as type "1" (directory), then it is
handled like always, with one exception: if a file named "dir.info"
exists in that directory, it is processed as a MDF file and the rest of
the directory is ignored. As always, any file in that directory whose
name begins with a dot is processed as an MDF file, and certain file
names are always skipped over.
2) If a file is named as type "1" (directory), then that file is
processed as an MDF file and that's it.
These two simple changes allow for a *much* easier to maintain
file tree. For example, for one department in the University of Iowa,
the directory contains three .mnu files and a bunch of .txt files. The
.mnu files point to the .txt files (one .mnu file also contains entries
that point to the other two .mnu files as submenus), and everything
is easy to maintain using standard Unix utilities.
The MDF is a lot like the "old link" format used in gopher servers.
Each menu option reads like the following:
Type=0
Name=Registrar's Office
Path=~/registrar/main.mnu
Host=chop.isca.uiowa.edu
Port=8337
If either the "Host" or the "Port" lines are missing, the server
assumes the current host and the current post (that is, it assumes
itself). If the Path begins with "~/", then the rest of the path is
relative to the directory that contains the MDF file, which allows
trees to be moved pretty easily.
In addition, anything appearing between the lines ".info" and
".endinfo" is read-only text to be displayed at the top of the menu.
An example of one of our menus follows:
.info
This is the May edition of Passport, the newsletter for the Office of
International Education and Services (OIES). You can go directly to this
menu by typing "go passport" at any Command=> prompt.
.endinfo
Type=0
Name=About Passport
Path=~/about.txt
Type=0
Name=Current News
Path=~/current.txt
Type=1
Name=Information About Immigration
Path=~/immig.mnu
Type=0
Name=Calendar of Upcoming Events
Path=~/calendar.txt
Type=0
Name=Employment Opportunities for Graduates
Path=~/employ.txt
Type=0
Name=Financial Aid
Path=~/finaid.txt
Type=0
Name=Off-Campus Educational Opportunities
Path=~/off-camp.txt
Type=0
Name=Nationality Organization Officers
Path=~/leaders.txt
Type=1
Name=Health Information
Path=~/health.mnu
Type=0
Name=Feature Stories with an International Theme
Path=~/features.txt
Produces the following menu on a Panda client:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page: 1 of 1 University of Iowa Panda (v. 0.8)
Passport: News & Information for Foreign Students and Scholars
This is the May edition of Passport, the newsletter for the Office of
International Education and Services (OIES). You can go directly to this
menu by typing "go passport" at any Command=> prompt.
--> 1. About Passport
2. Current News
3. Information About Immigration...
4. Calendar of Upcoming Events
5. Employment Opportunities for Graduates
6. Financial Aid
7. Off-Campus Educational Opportunities
8. Nationality Organization Officers
9. Health Information...
10. Feature Stories with an International Theme
Command==>
?-Help Up-Prev. Menu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
And has the following directory on our pgopherd server:
about.txt em-105-h.txt fsaf.txt immigadv.txt off-camp.txt
calendar.txt employ.txt health.mnu immigr.mnu pt.txt
current.txt f-1-on-c.txt health.txt info-sht.txt shs.txt
em-101-h.txt f1status.txt helth-mr.txt leaders.txt ucs.txt
em-103-h.txt features.txt immig.mnu main.mnu
em-104-h.txt finaid.txt immig.txt mbsclf.txt
which is a lot easier to handle.
Anyway, that's our Project Panda in a nutshell. If you're interested
in our future directions, or what we're doing to increase sucure
communications through the internet, telnet to "bbs.isca.uiowa.edu" and join
the Panda> room. Or send me personal E-Mail. Thanks for your time.
Lee Brintle | ``And so, I leave you with this final word:
Director, Project Panda | twang.''