InfoMagic Internet Tools 1995 April/Internet Tools.iso/infoserv/gopher/Macintosh-TurboGopher/old-versions/TurboGopher2.0b7.sea.hqx/TurboGopher 2.0b7.rsrc/TEXT_129_HeLp.txt

Text File | 1995-01-10 | 21.3 KB | 459 lines

======      Definitions      ======

    Gopher  n.  1. Any of various short tailed, burrowing mammals of the
    family Geomyidae, of North America.  2. (Amer. colloq.) Native or
    inhabitant of Minnesota: the Gopher State.   3.  (Amer. colloq.) One
    who runs errands, does odd-jobs, fetches or delivers documents for
    office staff.  4. (Computer tech.) software following a simple
    protocol for burrowing through a TCP/IP internet.

    Gopher+  n.  1. Hardier strains of mammals of the family
    Geomyidae.  2. (Amer. colloq.) Native or inhabitant of Minnesota,
    the Gopher state, in full winter regalia (see PARKA).  3. (Amer.
    colloq.) Executive secretary.  4. (computer tech.) Software
    following a simple protocol for burrowing through a TCP/IP
    internet, made more powerful by simple enhancements
    (see CREEPING FEATURISM).

    TurboGopher  n.  1. A small rodent with a turbocharger strapped on
    its back to increase its speed and ferocity.  2. (Amer. colloq.)
    Native or inhabitant of Minnesota after consuming three double
    espressos. 3. (Amer. colloq.) An Olympic sprinter who runs errands,
    does odd-jobs, fetches or delivers documents for office staff.  4.
    (computer tech.) Speed-optimized Macintosh software following a
    simple protocol for burrowing through a TCP/IP internet; network
    speed is achieved by using turbocharged software; incoming bits spin
    the turbine that pumps out the outgoing bits.


======      Overview      ======

TurboGopher is a Macintosh application that we believe is (still!)
the fastest Macintosh Gopher client available. Beyond optimizing
TurboGopher for raw speed while fetching documents and directories,
we turbocharged the user interface by displaying information as
soon as possible... you can read the first part of a document or
directory while the rest is being fetched. You can fetch multiple
documents or directories at the same time.  TurboGopher also
supports the Gopher+ extensions to the original Internet Gopher
protocol.  TurboGopher runs in native mode on both 68K Macs and
on Power Macs.

In spite of the design goal to run fast as possible, TurboGopher is
a good Mac citizen: it shares time with other applications. You
can put TurboGopher in the background to fetch lengthy items in the
background while you work in another application in the foreground.
You can even use TurboGopher to download entire directories of
Mac software with a single command.

TurboGopher is copyright © 1991-1995 by the University of Minnesota.


======      What is Gopher?      ======

The Internet Gopher protocol and the first Gopher software was
developed by the Gopher Team at the University of Minnesota. Gopher
was originally created as a fast, simple, distributed, campus-wide
information search and retrieval system. A worldwide network of
Gopher servers now exists; this network of Gopher servers is at
your service from a Mac, PC, or workstation connected to the
Internet. Gopher clients can also access non-gopher based services
to seamlessly access a variety of non-Gopher services such as FTP,
 Archie, WAIS, USENET news, www, whois servers, etc. either via
gateway servers or by using Helper Applications.

The Gopher software may be retrieved from numerous Gopher or FTP
archive sites, including the University of Minnesota Gopher server,
the Merit Software Archive Gopher server, and by anonymous FTP
from boombox.micro.umn.edu and sumex-aim.stanford.edu. The most
recent release of TurboGopher is always available from the
University of Minnesota Gopher server (or by anonymous ftp from
boombox.micro.umn.edu). If you discover a bug, you might check
to see if you have the newest version of TurboGopher; perhaps
the bug has been fixed. The version number of your TurboGopher
may be found clicking on the application's icon in Finder and
choosing 'Get Info' from the Finder's File menu.


======      How does it work?      ======

Information accessible via Gopher is stored on many computers all
over the Internet. These computers are called Gopher servers.
Information stored on many kinds of non-gopher servers is also
available via special gopher servers that act as gateways
(protocol translators). Virtually any popular computer (Mac, Unix
box, PC, or larger computer) can be used as a server. Servers do
not just contain files, directories and searchable databases; they
can also contain references to other servers. To retrieve and
search this information, you need to run a Gopher client
application on your computer. TurboGopher is a Gopher client
application. You can set it up to remember how to connect to one
server; from here you can effortlessly traverse the network of all
interlinked servers.


======      Using TurboGopher      ======

TurboGopher now requires the use of System 7; sorry about that.
TurboGopher now also requires the use of the Thread Manager
extension.  Thread Manager is licensed from Apple Computer Inc. by
the University of Minnesota and is available with the TurboGopher
distribution  You should drop the Thread Manager extension into
your Extensions folder (if you are running a system older than 7.5)
and restart your Mac. Thread Manager is part of System 7.5
(and newer systems).

TurboGopher uses MacTCP to communicate with gopher servers on a
network. Assuming your Mac has correctly configured MacTCP software
installed in the System Folder, TurboGopher is all set to go.

In addition since TurboGopher makes extensive use of other applications
(Helper Applications... for example to fetch items via FTP or to
render GIF or html items), we suggest that you install our recommended
suite of Helper applications on your hard disk.  The suite is
available with the TurboGopher distribution from boombox.micro.umn.edu
(by ftp or by gopher).


======  Converting your old (version 1.x) Bookmark files  ======

If you have not already saved the TurboGopher 1.x bookmarks in
your bookmark window to a file, select the bookmark window and
choose 'Save As a Bookmark File' from the File menu.  Now quit from
the old TurboGopher and launch TurboGopher 2.0. Hold down the Option
key and while holding it down, select Open from the File menu.
You will be able to select your old Bookmark file and it will be
converted to the new format. You'll have a chance to save in the new format.
Now you can cut and paste the items into your new Bookmark Worksheet
if you wish.

Remember, with TurboGopher 2.0 you can cut-copy and paste any gopher
items between any list windows.


======      Navigating Gopherspace      ======

To navigate through gopherspace, double-click on any interesting
items to open (fetch) them. If you double-click on a file,
TurboGopher will fetch and display the file. Opening a folder will
let you view its contents. Double-clicking on the question-mark
(Search) icons will let you search a database. On most gopher
servers these databases are full-text indexes of a collection of
information. Full-text index means that every word in every
document is considered a keyword. The best way to search a gopher
full-text database is specify the words for which to search when
TurboGopher presents you with a dialog box. The results of the
search are returned as a list of documents containing those words.

If you double-click on the phone-book icons TurboGopher will launch
the Ph application with which you can search electronic phone
books. Phone book databases are structured in the sense that they
have fields (i.e. a name field, an address field, and a phone
number  field). Of course you need to have Ph on your Mac's hard
disk.  TurboGopher expects Ph version 1.2b1 or newer.

Disk icons represent archived Mac software or documents that you can
fetch; these items will be saved to your hard disk. Such items are
often stored in compressed form to save space. You need to have
Mac utilities to 'uncompress' such items.  We recommend
StuffIt Expander which can deal with virtually all the kinds of
archives you may encounter.  StuffIt Expander can be found on
the UMich archive and also in the TurboGopher helper applications
directory on boombox.micro.umn.edu.

Items that are specific to MS-DOS are seen as documents with a tiny
'PC' emblazoned on them; similarly items specific to UNIX show up
as  documents with a tiny 'UX' on them. You can retrieve either of
these  kinds of items if you like. TurboGopher will ask you if you
wish to save  them to your disk. You may not 'view' these items as
text. In fact it  will probably make very little sense to fetch
such items unless you intend  to further transfer them later from
your Mac to another kind of computer, or if you have some special
tools on your Mac that will allow you to use  these kinds of items.

Items appearing as documents with a starburst on them are probably
graphics or picture files (typically in GIF, JPEG, or PICT format).
TurboGopher will transfer such files, save them on your disk, and
optionally launch a picture-viewing helper application if you wish
to view the picture.  We recommend JPEGView.

Items with an 'h' in the icon are html files. TurboGopher will fetch
such files and then pass them to an application capable of displaying
html, such as MacWeb.


======      Connecting to terminal-based services      ======

Opening the 'terminal' icons will make TurboGopher launch NCSA
Telnet (or TN3270 if appropriate) and start a terminal session to a
terminal-based information system. Typically these are library
catalogs or other such services. Note that for this to work you
need to have Telnet or TN3270 installed on your Macintosh.
TurboGopher expects Telnet 2.6 or newer.


======      Alternate Views      ======

Gopher+ servers may store more than one representation of a document
(an image, text, sound, video, etc. ). If more than one view of a
document is available, you can select between the views by
choosing the 'Get Alternate Views' item from the Gopher menu. When
alternate views are available, an alternate view window will be
displayed with descriptions of the views.

For many alternate views of documents, TurboGopher will save a copy
of the item to your Macintosh's disk, and then (under System 7)
optionally ask the Finder to open the item with a helper
application. You can configure which applications should be used
as TurboGopher helpers; to do this see the section on
configuration options.


======      Bookmarks      ======

If you formulate a search or find a folder you would like to come back to
quickly later, you can save the entire list window to your Mac hard disk.
with the Save As… menu item. You may also cut and paste items in list
windows using standard Mac Cut-Copy-Paste. This allows you to rearrange
items in any window.  We call cut-copied-pasted items Bookmarks because
you are not really dealing with the actual item... you are just saving a link
(or pointer or reference) to the item's location. The actual item stays on
the server, and indeed may change contents between two successive times
you fetch it.

There is a special window called the Bookmark Worksheet window that
is intended to be a kind of "construction area" for you to
build your own scratch-pad of useful gopher resources. You can show and
hide this window. Its contents are automatically saved in a file called
Bookmark Worksheet in the same directory as the TurboGopher application.

You may edit the names or other parts of bookmarks using the Edit
Gopher Descriptor… menu item. Unless you understand the Gopher protocol we
don't recommend that you change anything except perhaps the title (name)
of a Bookmark.

If you connect to a new gopher server and you wish to save a reference
to the server, deselect all the items in the window (click after the
last item in the window), then choose Copy from the Edit menu.  Now
you can Paste as you would any other bookmark.


======      Advanced Navigation Features  & Shortcuts    ======

You may use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to move up
and down lists in windows. The Enter or Return key opens an item (and is
equivalent to double-clicking on an item). Use of the arrow keys
is not supported on the Mac Plus.... (sorry).

If you select more than one item (eg. via Select All or by
Shift-Clicking an extended selection) and hit the Enter key or
choose Get Selected Items from the Gopher menu,
TurboGopher will fetch ALL the items you have selected.  It will
attempt to do this in as safe and respectful manner as possible
both for you and for the server. To achieve this it will keep
concurrent requests to a small minimum.  You shouldn't run out of
memory or processing power and the server shouldn't feel
overwhelmed either.  If you have a bunch of files selected
that must be downloaded to your Mac, we suggest that you use
the Preferences menu item to select a default download directory
(otherwise you will be plagued with a series of standard "Save File"
dialogs).

Note that if there are a bunch of text documents in your selection
they will all be retrieved and displayed.  If you want them to
be saved directly to a file instead, hold down the Control key
while you choose Get Selected Items from the Gopher menu (or equivalently
hit the Enter/Return key).

You may also type the first letter (or first few letters) of an item
name in a list and TurboGopher will highlight the first item it
finds that matches (like the Finder does in list views). The Find
menu item is available to locate an item in a list: just type a
string in the Find dialog. Find can also be used to search for
text in open document windows (such as this Help document).

To delete any item in any list window, click once on the item to
select it, then hit the Delete key much as you would to delete any
item on a Mac.

The Recent menu lets you go back to any document or directory
window you have viewed during your Gopher session.
The Recent list remembers the last 50 items you visit.

Pressing the escape key in a window causes TurboGopher to release
the contents of a window and re-fetch the contents.

If you click in the close box of a window while holding down the Shift key,
the window will be closed will also be removed from the Recent menu.
If you click in the close box while holding down the Option key, the window
will be closed, and so will all the other windows. Of course if you hold
down the Option AND Shift keys all the windows will be closed AND forgotten.

If you hold down the Option key while Double clicking on an item
in a list, TurboGopher will close the parent window after opening
the window for the selected item.

For the power user, if you hold down the Control key while SINGLE
clicking on an item in a list, TurboGopher will display the item's
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) as well as the Gopher selector
string, host name, port number and Gopher+ baggage. This is a quick
peek. If you want to copy-paste this information, use the Get
Attribute Info menu item found under the Gopher menu.  There is also
a power user way to copy a URL: hold down the Option key while
selecting Copy from the Edit menu.


======      Item Attributes      ======

Modern Gopher servers (referred to as Gopher+ servers)
can provide you with information about any selected item, much like
the Finder's Get Info menu lets you get information about a Mac item.

Use the 'Get Attribute Info' menu item of the Gopher menu for this.


======      Canceling Slow Network Operations      ======

TurboGopher executes most requests in a few seconds. A document or
directory is displayed as it is received. However, if a server is
especially slow or busy or if you have started to fetch what appears
to be a very long and uninteresting document or directory, you may
cancel the fetching process by holding down the Command key and
typing the period (Command-.) or by closing the document or directory
window. Once you have closed the window, TurboGopher assumes that it
does not need to fetch the remainder of the item. Note that when you
fetch a file that is saved to your Mac disk, TurboGopher displays a
window with the status of the transaction. Again, to cancel, just
close the window.

TurboGopher runs happily in the background (so you can fetch
something very large or from a very slow server while you do something
else in another application in the foreground). You may also fetch an
item (file or directory) while another one is still being fetched, since
TurboGopher supports multiple concurrent streams.


======      Starting and Configuring TurboGopher      ======

The 'Home Gopher' item under the Gopher menu opens a window
containing the initial directory fetched by connecting to your
home Gopher server. You may change your home Gopher server by
using the 'Preferences' item under the Gopher menu. To do this you
need the full Internet domain name and port of the desired primary
server.


======      TurboGopher Preferences    ======

You may change the font and style for any document or list window
using the Format menu. The Preferences menu item also lets you
change the default font and style (used for all new documents or lists).
Following the Macintosh guidelines, TurboGopher starts out displaying
text in the standard application font.

With Gopher+ servers, items may be available in a number of
alternate views. When fetched, these alternate views are typically
saved as a file to be viewed by a Mac application. If you are a
network/macintosh cowboy, you can also change the Mac application
and Mac filetype associated with a Gopher+ alternate view....
(this changes the helper application that TurboGopher asks the
finder to launch to view the document) via the Preferences menu.
Double-click the view in the list and you will be presented with a
dialog in which you can select the application to be used as a
TurboGopher helper.

There are two helper applications that you might want to change to
suit your needs.

The first is the application that deals with BinHexed items
(Mac software and documents) downloaded from servers.
The line specifying this starts with simply "BinHex".
This helper is initially set to point back to TurboGopher.  We
think it might be a good idea to point it at StuffIt Expander
instead.  If you do this, all incoming BinHexed files will be
saved (raw) in a form that StuffIt Expander can process.

The second helper is the one that deals with plain text.
The line specifying this starts with the word "Text".
This helper is also initially set to point back to TurboGopher.
So when you save text files from TurboGopher, they are saved as
TurboGopher files.  Since TurboGopher has a fast editor within
it, and it can view huge files we don't recommend changing this
(SimpleText only handles 32K of text and it is much slower).
However if you have a favorite text editor and want your files
to be saved for this editor, change the Text helper application.
For heaven's sake don't use Messy Word....

If you choose a default Download Folder via Preferences, TurboGopher
will save all downloaded items into this folder without putting up
a standard Save File dialog.  We strongly recommend that you do this.


======      Miscellaneous      ======

TurboGopher saves or caches the item lists for all visited directories
(even when windows are closed). Since these lists shouldn't have to be
fetched from the server again, this dramatically increases speed when
choosing any item from the Recent menu.  Under certain circumstances
these cached items are released... and choosing them from the Recent
menu now will make TurboGopher re-fetch them (it will just take a little
longer if this happens).

TurboGopher stores what it needs in a file called TurboGopher Preferences;
this lives in the Preferences folder, which is found in your System Folder.

TurboGopher is very content to live in the default memory partition we
allocate for it (around 700K).  We cannot think of many reasons to
give it more memory.

======     Known Bugs      ======

Window width not dynamic.
There are screen update problems under certain conditions.


======      Incomplete features      ======

Command-Click on title bar.
Drag Items from window to window or to the desktop.


======      For Experts      ======

You may send e-mail to the Gopher Team at:

             [e-mail]

to report bugs, make suggestions, or (of course!) bestow praise. To
be informed by e-mail of new developments in the Gopher world, or
of new versions of Gopher software, you may subscribe to the
'gopher-announce' mailing list; Send your request to:

       [e-mail].

Have fun surfing the Internet...

- The Internet Gopher Team at the University of Minnesota



-------------------------------------------------
...and now, to keep the lawyers happy...

The TurboGopher software and documentation is copyright © 1991 - 1995
by the University of Minnesota.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and
documentation for non-commercial purposes and without fee is hereby
granted, provided that the University of Minnesota copyright notices and
this permission notice appear in all copies, and that the name
University of Minnesota not be used in advertising or publicity
pertaining to this software and documentation without specific, written
prior permission. The University of Minnesota makes no representations
about the suitability of this software and documentation for any
purpose.  It is provided 'as is' without express or implied warranty.

Commercial use of TurboGopher requires specific permission from the
University of Minnesota; contact the Internet gopher development team at
[e-mail] for further information.
-------------------------------------------------