How to use Gopher

	Gopher initially was intended to serve as a campus-wide information system for students and universities. Because the gopher's intention was to serve students with all necessary information for their studies, most of the gophers are located at universities. They mostly offer scientific documents and maybe a gateway to ftp. It's ability to offer all kind of files, such as text, sounds and images makes it somehow the ancestor to the World Wide Web The important difference is, that you can't view those files on line. You have to download and view them with the application they were created with. client
	What do I need ? As a gopher client you can either use your web browser or a special gopher client. Gopher clients can be found at the following locations: WS Gopher BC Gopher H Gopher Internet Mac Software Mac Helpers Mac Internet Apps Turbogopher
	To use your web browser as a gopher client, you have to type gopher://address where address has to be replaced with the address of the gopher server you want to connect to. Top
	Where can I connect ? Gopher isn't very popular any more. More and more gopher servers are shut down in advantage of an WWW server. However, there still are some left. The following address provides a list of interesting and valuable gopher servers: Gopher Jewels Top
	How do I work with Gopher ? What you will see when you start up your gopher client is a gopher directory. This directory can be compared to a directory on your hard drive. There might be text files and binary files such as sounds and images. If you are using a graphical window based client, then the type of the file might be indicated through a special icon in front of the file. A gopher directory can contain other gopher directories. These directories may be on the same server or on a different one. Viewing files To view a file, you will have to download it. This is done by clicking on the desired file. You will see a progress indicator or a message on the screen, saying that the selected file currently is being transferred. After the file has been downloaded you need to have a viewer capable of viewing the downloaded file. Also, some clients will automatically start up this viewer (if the file extension of the downloaded file is associated with it; this specially applies to MS Window based clients). Also some browsers might leave the file somewhere on your hard disk (in a temporary directory) or will delete it after you close the viewer. Text files are normally displayed in the Gopher Window itself. Browsing subdirectories As mentioned above a gopher directory can contain sub directories. Again, if you're using a graphical window based client you might see a special icon in front of the directory. To browse the contents of a subdirectory click on that directory and the contents of this directory will be shown. Like in the parent directory, this can be files and/or other subdirectories. Going to the prevous directory If you want to see the contents of the previous directory again, you will have to go one level up. This is done by clicking a special button (window based clients) or pressing a special key (mostly "u") in text based clients. Then the contents of the previous directory will be loaded again. Saving a bookmark file Most gopher clients offer to save the current location (that is the gopher server's address and the current directory) as a bookmark. To recall a previously saved bookmark simply select the bookmark from a list (where to find this list is client depending) and the directory will be loaded. Top
	FTP and Gopher Most gopher servers also offer a gateway to ftp. This means, that you can do an FTP session with a gopher client. Therefore you need to locate an entry that should read something like FTP server or ftp server of your choice. Mostly these entries are somewhere in a directory named other services or network services or gateways. Select this entry (ftp server, etc.) and you will be prompted to enter the address of a ftp server. If the server is an anonymous ftp server, then you might be logged on automatically, that is you don't have to enter a username/password. After you have successfully connected you will see the initial directory of the FTP server. This is the same as doing a dir after a log on. Now you can download files just as you would do when connected to a gopher server. Top
	Searching Gopherspace Sometimes there is a possibility to search a file (not for !) on a server. For example, this is useful when looking for a phone number, which is stored in a phone dictionary on the server. Therefore some servers offer this option to search a specific entry. Note that you can't search the whole server. You only can search entries, where a special search option has be implemented by the system administrator. When using such a search function (e.g. in a phone book), then you will be prompted to enter a keyword. If the search has been successful, you will be presented a directory or a single file containing the found items. You can view them in the usual way. Veronica Sometimes you don't want to browse your way through all the existing menus on a Gopher server. To locate information in Gopherspace you can use a service called veronica Veronica can be seen as what archie is for locating files on an ftp server. Most of the time, you will find Veronica in a menu labeled something like Search in Gopherspace, Search in all Gophers or Keyword-Search. Veronica will search a database, which is regularly updated. Access to Veronica is handled directly by the Gopher server. There is no additional software required. Note that some Gopher servers only allow local search, others world-wide search. Veronica will only search titles of Documents, not the contents. To search for a document, locate one of the menus mentioned above. Then usually a small window will pop up, allowing to to specify one or more search criteria. Veronica searches are not case-sensitive. So searching for Windows Programming and windows programming will produce the same results. A blank between to keywords is interpreted like a boolean AND. This means, that Veronica only finds documents, where the title contains both keywords. Now hit enter. The search result will be presented in a gopher menu. Top
	Additional Information Because the gopher initially was intended as a scientific information system, most documents you will find on a gopher are scientific papers and/or articles. So if you are looking for information regarding a scientific article you intend to write, gopher is a good place to start with.

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