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Mining data with Gopher and WAIS
What is gopher?
What is WAIS?
What is gopherspace?
What are the differences between gopher and FTP or the Web?
When would you use gopher? When would you use WAIS?
What software do you need to run gopher?
What hardware do you need to run gopher?
How do you make a gopher transfer using a browser?
How do you make a gopher transfer using a shell account?
How do you make a gopher transfer using a gopher client program?
How do you locate the files you want to transfer?
What is Veronica?
What is Jughead? What is Archie?

What is gopher?

Gopher is a system of linked menus and search engines that lets you find and retrieve files over the Internet. The files can contain text, programs, images, or any other data types, but the gopher software itself shows you only the file name and sometimes a description. Files and documents you select are copied to your computer--or to the computer you connect through if you're using a Unix shell account.

Much like retrieving documents on the Web, you can use gopher to retrieve a document directly by exact name and location, you can navigate along a chain of links until you find a file of interest, or you can pose a query to a search engine that will then return a list of matching files and directories.

Although eclipsed by the sudden growth of the Web, gophers were fast becoming the major repository of documents and files on the Internet. As of 1994, for example, most estimates put the number of gopher servers at more than 5,000 and the number of documents available by gopher at more than 15 million. Although many gopher servers are being replaced by Web sites, other gopher servers--especially at university and government sites--are still expanding their areas of coverage.

The gopher system was first developed at the University of Minnesota Microcomputer, Workstation, and Networks Center as a campus information system. The name is a pun combining the program's function ("go for") and the name of the animal that's the U of Minnesota mascot.

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What is WAIS?

The Wide Area Information Service system is a full-text indexing and retrieval system that lets you pose a query and receive a list of documents ranked in the order of their apparent relevance to your request.

Although originally designed as a separate Internet service with its own host servers and client applications, WAIS is becoming a hidden back-end technology that you might access by filling in a form using your Web browser--often without any indication that a WAIS server has produced the result.

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What is gopherspace?

Because a menu on one gopher server can take you to another server, much like a link on the Web, all gophers that share at least one link leading back to the Mother Gopher at the University of Minnesota form a continuous chain. The total collection of documents and menus in that chain is often referred to as "gopherspace."

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What are the differences between gopher and FTP or the Web?

Gopher, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), and the Web are all systems for retrieving information over the Internet, but their interfaces and navigation features are somewhat different. In brief, with FTP you select files and navigate from directory to directory using commands based on the Unix file system. You can transfer any type of file, but FTP supports only limited file viewing commands, and only for text files. (See Transferring Files with FTP). Because there's no linking system, limited file display, and no added menu structure, browsing and exploring is much more awkward than it is with gopher.

With the World Wide Web, navigation is even easier than with gopher. Links can be added within documents, and you can display graphics and a growing variety of multimedia files as well as text. But creating Web sites is more complex than creating gopher archives. Gopher servers and clients are simpler than their Web equivalents, which means smaller memory requirements, faster speed, and greater reliability. And many existing gopher documents may never be made available through the Web.

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When would you use gopher? When would you use WAIS?

If you can't find a file on the Web and you suspect it's online, gopher is the next service to check. It's far easier to use than FTP, and almost as universally supported.

Sometimes, a Web site or print publication will tell you a file or collection of files is available through gopher. Many of the larger online shareware public-domain collections were built on the gopher system and still offer better or faster access than does the Web. And many academic topics are still better covered in gopherspace than on the Web.

Looking for random topic via a WAIS server is not usually worthwhile. Although lists of WAIS servers and topics exist--at WWW Subject Tree of WAIS Databases for example, most topics are now better indexed by major Web search engines.

However, if you're setting up a specialized document collection for either internal or external access, providing a forms-based WAIS gateway may be a worthwhile project.

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What software do you need to run gopher?

Because you're reading this on the Net, you may not need a separate gopher client program. All the popular Web browser programs include simple gopher client services. If you're only downloading a few files now and then, it's probably not worth getting and learning a separate program.

If you've got bigger plans, look for a server program for your host computer or a client program for your local computer. For Windows, a good client to try is WS Gopher. On the Mac, try TurboGopher or if you're feeling adventurous, try the experimental, slow, but cool TurboGopherVR, which shows gopherspace as a stylized form of virtual reality. Clients for other systems and gopher server programs are listed in the Gopher FAQ.

You can also use gopher if you're using the Internet through a Unix shell account, either via a dialup, local-area network, or directly attached terminal. Just type gopher at a command prompt to start up the program.

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What hardware do you need to run gopher?

If you can run a browser, you can almost certainly run a gopher client. Gopher clients generally require only a standard video display or a terminal that can accept commands to write at specified row and column positions, that is, a terminal with an "addressable cursor." Gopher programs designed for Unix shell access are text-based and can run on simple text-only terminals. More modern versions for desktop systems and direct or dialup connections often support point-and-click mouse navigation.

On the server side, gopher program requirements are modest. Both freeware and commercial gopher servers are available for most common desktop and Unix machines. As with other information services, you may need a large and fast hard disk if you want to offer your readers a large selection of files.

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How do you make a gopher transfer using a browser?

In most browsers, you access gopher servers by typing your request in the URL window in a format similar to the way you specify a Web address.

You start the request with gopher://, rather than the http:// you'd use for Web addresses, followed by the path to the file. The first path element is always the name of the machine and domain in the Internet's standard "dot" format. Next comes a slash, then the pathway to the file starting at the root directory on the specified machine.

For example, to retrieve the gopher protocol specification from the gopher home site at the University of Minnesota, you could enter, all on one line, gopher://boombox.micro.umn.edu/00/gopher/gopher_protocol/protocol where gopher:// is the file-access method, boombox.micro.umn.edu is the name of the gopher server where the file resides, 00/gopher/gopher_protocol/ is the set of directories that form the path to the file, and protocol is the name of the file.

You can also type in just the access method and the server name as gopher://boombox.micro.umn.edu, then click your way down the directory tree to the file you want.

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How do you make an gopher transfer using a Unix shell account?

As with most Unix programs, you start the gopher program by typing gopher at a command prompt. This should connect you to a default gopher menu pointing to information topics and other gopher servers.

If you know the complete name and path for the file you want to retrieve, you can issue the complete command at the prompt as gopher server/path/filename.

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How do you make a gopher transfer using a gopher client program?

Details vary depending on the program, but most gopher client programs for Windows or Macintosh offer the same command functions. You open up the program, select a server, pick the files you want to transfer from a scrolling list, and then transfer your files with the click of a button.

If you're going to make extensive you of gopher you may be better off using one of the programs listed in the FAQ, rather than your Web browser.Most dedicated gopher clients take less memory, run faster, and offer some customized command functions, such as setting a default starting gopher different from your normal Web home page.

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How do you locate the files you want to transfer?

If you know the name of the gopher server, but not the exact path or file name from there, you can navigate and explore step by step. First, you open the server, putting gopher// and the server name in the URL address box, issuing the gopher command from a Unix shell account, or using the Open Gopher server function in a desktop client program.

Then, you work your way down the directory tree to the appropriate file or follow a trail of menu links to other gopher servers. While many sites have created special gopher menus, sites that simply import their directory structure usually follow the standard Unix convention of putting files that are available for transfer in subdirectories of the pub (public) directory.

If you know the name of the file as it would be listed on the computer directory, but you don't know the server, you can search for the file using an Internet service called Veronica.

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What is Veronica?

The Veronica service allows you to search the list of items available through all gophers known to the Mother Gopher at the University of Minnesota. If you access gopher directly, you should find a Veronica server on your topmost gopher menu.

If you're accessing gopherspace through the Web, you can jump directly to the main Veronica site. Just about all Veronica servers include in their menus a list of the other publicly available Veronica servers.

Publicly accessible Veronica servers are often quite busy, and you may get a network- or server-busy error message in most of your attempts. Many gopher servers have a menu item that tries all available public Veronica sites in turn, but you may still have to repeat a request to get through.

Making a search on a Veronica server is much like making a Web search using a character-oriented browser. Typically, you start up your gopher program, and then pick your default Veronica server from a list of perhaps a dozen starting gopher selections. You select the kind of search--usually menus only, versus all entries--and enter the word or words you want to search for in a on-screen box. Then you wait for the results.

Incidentally, Veronica ostensibly stands for Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives.

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What can you go for?
At one local Veronica server, for example, entering malt or milkshake during daytime peak hours took three tries on a busy server. Then a search of nearly two minutes returned a numbered list of some 156 numbered choices in half a dozen countries. Refining the query to chocolate malt produced a more focused list of eight entries.

Veronica supports more serious searches as well. A quick hunt will bring you materials safety data for most common industrial chemicals, Internet nodes in Mozambique, or papers about William Shakespeare.

What is Jughead? What is Archie?

While Veronica is meant to search all gopher servers, Jughead does a similar search on a selected server or a subset of gopherspace. For example, a university library may use Jughead to let you perform a search that looks only at the online card catalog rather than at everything in gopherspace. Many Veronica sites use Jughead to search for gopher menus rather than individual gopher documents. This cuts down on the size of the search and of the returned list, but still lets you proceed onwards to individual files using the normal gopher navigation commands.

Archie is a similar type of search engine, but its database is the list of files available for transfer by FTP rather than by gopher, although many files can be reach by both. See Transferring files with FTP for details.

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Steven Rosenthal practiced up with more than 1,000 previously published articles about interaction, networking, and communication before writing this one.

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