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- Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 10:12:06 -0600
- From: BITNET list server at UA1VM (1.8a) <LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU>
- Subject: File: "MAP19 LESSON"
-
- MAP19: GOPHER (PART TWO)
-
-
- "Nothing quite new is perfect." -- Cicero, Brutus
-
-
- There are three ways to enter Gopherspace:
-
- 1. through a Gopher client running on your local Internet service
- provider's machine,
-
- 2. through a telnet connection to a publicly-accessible Gopher
- site, or
-
- 3. through e-mail (we'll talk about e-mail access on Friday).
-
- How can you tell if your local Internet service provider has a Gopher
- client that you can use? Easy! Just type
-
- gopher
-
- at your system's command prompt, and watch what happens. If your provider
- has a Gopher client, your Gopher client's root menu will appear on your
- screen.
-
- If your site does *not* have a Gopher client, however, all you will
- see on your screen after you type "gopher" will be an error message.
-
- Fortunately, if you can't access Gopher through your local provider,
- you can always access Gopher through telnet. The following is
- a list adapted from the Gopher FAQ (1) and it lists the telnet
- addresses and logins for just a few of the publicly accessible
- Gopher sites:
-
- Telnet Address Login Area
- ------------------------- ------ -------------
- consultant.micro.umn.edu gopher North America
- ux1.cso.uiuc.edu gopher North America
- panda.uiowa.edu panda North America
- gopher.msu.edu gopher North America
- gopher.ebone.net gopher Europe
- gopher.sunet.se gopher Sweden
- info.anu.edu.au info Australia
- tolten.puc.cl gopher South America
- ecnet.ec gopher Ecuador
- gan.ncc.go.jp gopher Japan
-
- Please use the site that is closest to you. Also, if you are in
- North America, please remember that the consultant.micro.umn.edu
- address is the most used Gopher address in the entire world
- (this is the address of the University of Minnesota's Gopher
- server -- the birthplace of Gopher). You might be better off
- if you telneted to another North American site.
-
- Also, if your site is running its own Gopher client software, it
- is *STRONGLY* recommended that you use your site's Gopher client
- software instead of telneting into the public logon sites. Your
- client is set up so that you can use custom features not available
- through a telnet connection (i.e. mouse, scroll bars, etc.). You
- will also find that your provider's Gopher client will run much
- faster than a telnet Gopher client (1).
-
-
- DIRECT CLIENT ACCESS TO REMOTE GOPHERS
-
- As I said above, to access your root Gopher menu, all that you
- have to do is type
-
- gopher
-
- at your system's command prompt.
-
- Sometimes, however, you may want to bypass your own root menu and
- connect directly to a remote Gopher server. You can do this by
- typing
-
- gopher <site address>
-
- at your system's command prompt, replacing <site address> with the
- the address of the remote Gopher server that you want to access.
-
- For example, to connect directly with the info.asu.edu Gopher
- I would type
-
- gopher info.asu.edu
-
- at my system's command prompt.
-
-
- LOCAL VERSUS DISTANT INFORMATION
-
- Spend any amount of time in Gopherspace, and you are bound to run
- into roadblocks. The most common roadblock that you will encounter
- is an error message that says
-
- Empty Menu; no items selected or nothing available
-
- when you try to access a file or menu that you *KNOW* exists (and
- that you may have even accessed just a few seconds earlier).
-
- One of the biggest mistakes that people make is they assume
- that this "Empty Menu" error is a problem with their local
- Internet service provider's system. IT ISN'T!!
-
- Your local Internet service provider is only responsible for the
- LOCAL portion of your Internet service. If you are having problems
- accessing a distant Gopher file or menu, your problem isn't
- with your local provider, it is with the distant site that
- you are trying to access!
-
- There are two things that you need to keep in mind any time
- you are having problems with Gopher:
-
- 1. Gopherspace is incredibly dynamic. Sites "appear" and
- and "disappear" every second of every day. Internet
- traffic, power outages, weather, scheduled repairs,
- and even squirrels affect whether a site is on-line
- or off-line.
-
- 2. Sites can "disappear" for as little as a second or
- they can shut down and disappear forever. If you
- are having problems accessing something in Gopherspace,
- wait a little while and try to access it later.
-
-
- UNIX GOPHER COMMANDS
-
- Once you access your Gopher client (or telnet into a Gopher client),
- take a look at the bottom of the root menu. If you see a menu line
- that says
-
- Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu
-
- You are using a UNIX Gopher client.
-
- Fortunately, the on-line help menu for the UNIX Gopher is really
- good. If you type
-
- ?
-
- your screen will fill with a whole bunch of UNIX Gopher commands.
-
- I'm not going to show you all of these commands -- you can find
- them pretty easily by typing "?" -- but I do want to show you
- a few of the most important commands that you will use:
-
- Key What it does
- ----------- -----------------------------------
-
- Up arrow Moves the --> cursor up one line
- Down arrow Moves the --> cursor down one line
- Right arrow "Enters" the selected menu item
- or Return
- Left arrow "Exits" the item and returns you to
- or u the previous menu
-
- After you have entered a file and have gotten to the bottom of it,
- the following menu bar appears
-
- Press <RETURN> to continue, <m> to mail, <s> to save, or <p> to print
-
- Pressing "return" will just take you back to the previous menu. If
- you want a copy of the file, you are going to have to either press
- "m" or "s".
-
- If you are telneting into a Gopher client, or if the file is small,
- your best bet would be to type "m". The client will then ask you
- for an address you want the current document mailed to. Enter your
- full Internet e-mail address :)
-
-
- OTHER GOPHER CLIENT COMMANDS
-
- There are a whole bunch of different Gopher clients out there.
- Fortunately, they all work on the same basic principles, and
- they all have relatively good on-line help menus.
-
- Access your Gopher client, take a look at your help menu, and
- find the keys or commands necessary to:
-
- - Move the cursor up and down the screen
- - "Enter" files (select an item)
- - "Exit" files (go back to the previous menu)
- - Quit the program
-
- We'll talk about some of the more advanced commands later this
- week :)
-
-
- HOMEWORK:
-
- 1. Enter Gopherspace and play around :)
-
- 2. If you REALLY feel daring, you might want to find
- Richard Smith's "Navigating the Internet: Let's Go
- Gophern" workshop archives. The workshop was a one-month
- workshop which taught nothing but Gopher :)
-
- The following are some Gopher sites that I found that
- have the "Gophern" archives. You'll have to access
- these sites directly -- type "gopher <site address>" --
- and then hunt around the site for the "Gophern" files.
-
-
- gopher-chem.ucdavis.edu gopher.kfki.hu
- ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu gopher2.nhm.ac.uk
- rc1.vub.ac.be wealaka.okgeosurvey1.gov
- gopher.keller.clarke.edu ukoln.bath.ac.uk
- gopher.ub2.lu.se utl.library.utoronto.ca
-
-
- SOURCES:
-
- (1) From the University of Minnesota's Gopher FAQ, last modified
- on 7/25/94
-
-
- PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS LETTER DO NOT
- PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE
- THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA - TUSCALOOSA
-
- ROADMAP: COPYRIGHT PATRICK CRISPEN 1994. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
-
-