home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Network Working Group F. Anklesaria
- Request for Comments: 1436 M. McCahill
- P. Lindner
- D. Johnson
- D. Torrey
- B. Alberti
- University of Minnesota
- March 1993
-
-
- The Internet Gopher Protocol
- (a distributed document search and retrieval protocol)
-
- Status of this Memo
-
- This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
- not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is
- unlimited.
-
- Abstract
-
- The Internet Gopher protocol is designed for distributed document
- search and retrieval. This document describes the protocol, lists
- some of the implementations currently available, and has an overview
- of how to implement new client and server applications. This
- document is adapted from the basic Internet Gopher protocol document
- first issued by the Microcomputer Center at the University of
- Minnesota in 1991.
-
- Introduction
-
- 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.
-
- The Internet Gopher protocol and software follow a client-server
- model. This protocol assumes a reliable data stream; TCP is assumed.
- Gopher servers should listen on port 70 (port 70 is assigned to
- Internet Gopher by IANA). Documents reside on many autonomous
- servers on the Internet. Users run client software on their desktop
- systems, connecting to a server and sending the server a selector (a
- line of text, which may be empty) via a TCP connection at a well-
- known port. The server responds with a block of text terminated by a
- period on a line by itself and closes the connection. No state is
- retained by the server.
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 1]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- While documents (and services) reside on many servers, Gopher client
- software presents users with a hierarchy of items and directories
- much like a file system. The Gopher interface is designed to
- resemble a file system since a file system is a good model for
- organizing documents and services; the user sees what amounts to one
- big networked information system containing primarily document items,
- directory items, and search items (the latter allowing searches for
- documents across subsets of the information base).
-
- Servers return either directory lists or documents. Each item in a
- directory is identified by a type (the kind of object the item is),
- user-visible name (used to browse and select from listings), an
- opaque selector string (typically containing a pathname used by the
- destination host to locate the desired object), a host name (which
- host to contact to obtain this item), and an IP port number (the port
- at which the server process listens for connections). The user only
- sees the user-visible name. The client software can locate and
- retrieve any item by the trio of selector, hostname, and port.
-
- To use a search item, the client submits a query to a special kind of
- Gopher server: a search server. In this case, the client sends the
- selector string (if any) and the list of words to be matched. The
- response yields "virtual directory listings" that contain items
- matching the search criteria.
-
- Gopher servers and clients exist for all popular platforms. Because
- the protocol is so sparse and simple, writing servers or clients is
- quick and straightforward.
-
- 1. Introduction
-
- The Internet Gopher protocol is designed primarily to act as a
- distributed document delivery system. While documents (and services)
- reside on many servers, Gopher client software presents users with a
- hierarchy of items and directories much like a file system. In fact,
- the Gopher interface is designed to resemble a file system since a
- file system is a good model for locating documents and services. Why
- model a campus-wide information system after a file system? Several
- reasons:
-
- (a) A hierarchical arrangement of information is familiar to many
- users. Hierarchical directories containing items (such as
- documents, servers, and subdirectories) are widely used in
- electronic bulletin boards and other campus-wide information
- systems. People who access a campus-wide information server will
- expect some sort of hierarchical organization to the information
- presented.
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 2]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- (b) A file-system style hierarchy can be expressed in a simple
- syntax. The syntax used for the internet Gopher protocol is
- easily understandable, and was designed to make debugging servers
- and clients easy. You can use Telnet to simulate an internet
- Gopher client's requests and observe the responses from a server.
- Special purpose software tools are not required. By keeping the
- syntax of the pseudo-file system client/server protocol simple, we
- can also achieve better performance for a very common user
- activity: browsing through the directory hierarchy.
-
- (c) Since Gopher originated in a University setting, one of the
- goals was for departments to have the option of publishing
- information from their inexpensive desktop machines, and since
- much of the information can be presented as simple text files
- arranged in directories, a protocol modeled after a file system
- has immediate utility. Because there can be a direct mapping from
- the file system on the user's desktop machine to the directory
- structure published via the Gopher protocol, the problem of
- writing server software for slow desktop systems is minimized.
-
- (d) A file system metaphor is extensible. By giving a "type"
- attribute to items in the pseudo-file system, it is possible to
- accommodate documents other than simple text documents. Complex
- database services can be handled as a separate type of item. A
- file-system metaphor does not rule out search or database-style
- queries for access to documents. A search-server type is also
- defined in this pseudo-file system. Such servers return "virtual
- directories" or list of documents matching user specified
- criteria.
-
- 2. The internet Gopher Model
-
- A detailed BNF rendering of the internet Gopher syntax is available
- in the appendix...but a close reading of the appendix may not be
- necessary to understand the internet Gopher protocol.
-
- In essence, the Gopher protocol consists of a client connecting to a
- server and sending the server a selector (a line of text, which may
- be empty) via a TCP connection. The server responds with a block of
- text terminated with a period on a line by itself, and closes the
- connection. No state is retained by the server between transactions
- with a client. The simple nature of the protocol stems from the need
- to implement servers and clients for the slow, smaller desktop
- computers (1 MB Macs and DOS machines), quickly, and efficiently.
-
- Below is a simple example of a client/server interaction; more
- complex interactions are dealt with later. Assume that a "well-
- known" Gopher server (this may be duplicated, details are discussed
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 3]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- later) listens at a well known port for the campus (much like a
- domain-name server). The only configuration information the client
- software retains is this server's name and port number (in this
- example that machine is rawBits.micro.umn.edu and the port 70). In
- the example below the F character denotes the TAB character.
-
- Client: {Opens connection to rawBits.micro.umn.edu at port 70}
-
- Server: {Accepts connection but says nothing}
-
- Client: <CR><LF> {Sends an empty line: Meaning "list what you have"}
-
- Server: {Sends a series of lines, each ending with CR LF}
- 0About internet GopherFStuff:About usFrawBits.micro.umn.eduF70
- 1Around University of MinnesotaFZ,5692,AUMFunderdog.micro.umn.eduF70
- 1Microcomputer News & PricesFPrices/Fpserver.bookstore.umn.eduF70
- 1Courses, Schedules, CalendarsFFevents.ais.umn.eduF9120
- 1Student-Staff DirectoriesFFuinfo.ais.umn.eduF70
- 1Departmental PublicationsFStuff:DP:FrawBits.micro.umn.eduF70
- {.....etc.....}
- . {Period on a line by itself}
- {Server closes connection}
-
-
- The first character on each line tells whether the line describes a
- document, directory, or search service (characters '0', '1', '7';
- there are a handful more of these characters described later). The
- succeeding characters up to the tab form a user display string to be
- shown to the user for use in selecting this document (or directory)
- for retrieval. The first character of the line is really defining
- the type of item described on this line. In nearly every case, the
- Gopher client software will give the users some sort of idea about
- what type of item this is (by displaying an icon, a short text tag,
- or the like).
-
- The characters following the tab, up to the next tab form a selector
- string that the client software must send to the server to retrieve
- the document (or directory listing). The selector string should mean
- nothing to the client software; it should never be modified by the
- client. In practice, the selector string is often a pathname or
- other file selector used by the server to locate the item desired.
- The next two tab delimited fields denote the domain-name of the host
- that has this document (or directory), and the port at which to
- connect. If there are yet other tab delimited fields, the basic
- Gopher client should ignore them. A CR LF denotes the end of the
- item.
-
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 4]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- In the example, line 1 describes a document the user will see as
- "About internet Gopher". To retrieve this document, the client
- software must send the retrieval string: "Stuff:About us" to
- rawBits.micro.umn.edu at port 70. If the client does this, the
- server will respond with the contents of the document, terminated by
- a period on a line by itself. A client might present the user with a
- view of the world something like the following list of items:
-
-
- About Internet Gopher
- Around the University of Minnesota...
- Microcomputer News & Prices...
- Courses, Schedules, Calendars...
- Student-Staff Directories...
- Departmental Publications...
-
-
-
- In this case, directories are displayed with an ellipsis and files
- are displayed without any. However, depending on the platform the
- client is written for and the author's taste, item types could be
- denoted by other text tags or by icons. For example, the UNIX
- curses-based client displays directories with a slash (/) following
- the name; Macintosh clients display directories alongside an icon of
- a folder.
-
- The user does not know or care that the items up for selection may
- reside on many different machines anywhere on the Internet.
-
- Suppose the user selects the line "Microcomputer News & Prices...".
- This appears to be a directory, and so the user expects to see
- contents of the directory upon request that it be fetched. The
- following lines illustrate the ensuing client-server interaction:
-
-
- Client: (Connects to pserver.bookstore.umn.edu at port 70)
- Server: (Accepts connection but says nothing)
- Client: Prices/ (Sends the magic string terminated by CRLF)
- Server: (Sends a series of lines, each ending with CR LF)
- 0About PricesFPrices/AboutusFpserver.bookstore.umn.eduF70
- 0Macintosh PricesFPrices/MacFpserver.bookstore.umn.eduF70
- 0IBM PricesFPrices/IckFpserver.bookstore.umn.eduF70
- 0Printer & Peripheral PricesFPrices/PPPFpserver.bookstore.umn.eduF70
- (.....etc.....)
- . (Period on a line by itself)
- (Server closes connection)
-
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 5]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- 3. More details
-
- 3.1 Locating services
-
- Documents (or other services that may be viewed ultimately as
- documents, such as a student-staff phonebook) are linked to the
- machine they are on by the trio of selector string, machine domain-
- name, and IP port. It is assumed that there will be one well-known
- top-level or root server for an institution or campus. The
- information on this server may be duplicated by one or more other
- servers to avoid a single point of failure and to spread the load
- over several servers. Departments that wish to put up their own
- departmental servers need to register the machine name and port with
- the administrators of the top-level Gopher server, much the same way
- as they register a machine name with the campus domain-name server.
- An entry which points to the departmental server will then be made at
- the top level server. This ensures that users will be able to
- navigate their way down what amounts to a virtual hierarchical file
- system with a well known root to any campus server if they desire.
-
- Note that there is no requirement that a department register
- secondary servers with the central top-level server; they may just
- place a link to the secondary servers in their own primary servers.
- They may indeed place links to any servers they desire in their own
- server, thus creating a customized view of thethe Gopher information
- universe; links can of course point back at the top-level server.
- The virtual (networked) file system is therefore an arbitrary graph
- structure and not necessarily a rooted tree. The top-level node is
- merely one convenient, well-known point of entry. A set of Gopher
- servers linked in this manner may function as a campus-wide
- information system.
-
- Servers may of course point links at other than secondary servers.
- Indeed servers may point at other servers offering useful services
- anywhere on the internet. Viewed in this manner, Gopher can be seen
- as an Internet-wide information system.
-
- 3.2 Server portability and naming
-
- It is recommended that all registered servers have alias names
- (domain name system CNAME) that are used by Gopher clients to locate
- them. Links to these servers should use these alias names rather
- than the primary names. If information needs to be moved from one
- machine to another, a simple change of domain name system alias
- (CNAME) allows this to occur without any reconfiguration of clients
- in the field. In short, the domain name system may be used to re-map
- a server to a new address. There is nothing to prevent secondary
- servers or services from running on otherwise named servers or ports
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 6]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- other than 70, however these should be reachable via a primary
- server.
-
- 3.3 Contacting server administrators
-
- It is recommended that every server administrator have a document
- called something like: "About Bogus University's Gopher server" as
- the first item in their server's top level directory. In this
- document should be a short description of what the server holds, as
- well as name, address, phone, and an e-mail address of the person who
- administers the server. This provides a way for users to get word to
- the administrator of a server that has inaccurate information or is
- not running correctly. It is also recommended that administrators
- place the date of last update in files for which such information
- matters to the users.
-
- 3.4 Modular addition of services
-
- The first character of each line in a server-supplied directory
- listing indicates whether the item is a file (character '0'), a
- directory (character '1'), or a search (character '7'). This is the
- base set of item types in the Gopher protocol. It is desirable for
- clients to be able to use different services and speak different
- protocols (simple ones such as finger; others such as CSO phonebook
- service, or Telnet, or X.500 directory service) as needs dictate.
- CSO phonebook service is a client/server phonebook system typically
- used at Universities to publish names, e-mail addresses, and so on.
- The CSO phonebook software was developed at the University of
- Illinois and is also sometimes refered to as ph or qi. For example,
- if a server-supplied directory listing marks a certain item with type
- character '2', then it means that to use this item, the client must
- speak the CSO protocol. This removes the need to be able to
- anticipate all future needs and hard-wire them in the basic Internet
- Gopher protocol; it keeps the basic protocol extremely simple. In
- spite of this simplicity, the scheme has the capability to expand and
- change with the times by adding an agreed upon type-character for a
- new service. This also allows the client implementations to evolve
- in a modular fashion, simply by dropping in a module (or launching a
- new process) for some new service. The servers for the new service
- of course have to know nothing about Internet Gopher; they can just
- be off-the shelf CSO, X.500, or other servers. We do not however,
- encourage arbitrary or machine-specific proliferation of service
- types in the basic Gopher protocol.
-
- On the other hand, subsets of other document retrieval schemes may be
- mapped onto the Gopher protocol by means of "gateway-servers".
- Examples of such servers include Gopher-to-FTP gateways, Gopher-to-
- archie gateways, Gopher-to-WAIS gateways, etc. There are a number of
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 7]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- advantages of such mechanisms. First, a relatively powerful server
- machine inherits both the intelligence and work, rather than the more
- modest, inexpensive desktop system that typically runs client
- software or basic server software. Equally important, clients do not
- have to be modified to take advantage of a new resource.
-
- 3.5 Building clients
-
- A client simply sends the retrieval string to a server if it wants to
- retrieve a document or view the contents of a directory. Of course,
- each host may have pointers to other hosts, resulting in a "graph"
- (not necessarily a rooted tree) of hosts. The client software may
- save (or rather "stack") the locations that it has visited in search
- of a document. The user could therefore back out of the current
- location by unwinding the stack. Alternatively, a client with
- multiple-window capability might just be able to display more than
- one directory or document at the same time.
-
- A smart client could cache the contents of visited directories
- (rather than just the directory's item descriptor), thus avoiding
- network transactions if the information has been previously
- retrieved.
-
- If a client does not understand what a say, type 'B' item (not a core
- item) is, then it may simply ignore the item in the directory
- listing; the user never even has to see it. Alternatively, the item
- could be displayed as an unknown type.
-
- Top-level or primary servers for a campus are likely to get more
- traffic than secondary servers, and it would be less tolerable for
- such primary servers to be down for any long time. So it makes sense
- to "clone" such important servers and construct clients that can
- randomly choose between two such equivalent primary servers when they
- first connect (to balance server load), moving to one if the other
- seems to be down. In fact, smart client implementations do this
- clone server and load balancing. Alternatively, it may make sense to
- have the domain name system return one of a set of redundant of
- server's IP address to load balance betwen redundant sets of
- important servers.
-
- 3.6 Building ordinary internet Gopher servers
-
- The retrieval string sent to the server might be a path to a file or
- directory. It might be the name of a script, an application or even
- a query that generates the document or directory returned. The basic
- server uses the string it gets up to but not including a CR-LF or a
- TAB, whichever comes first.
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 8]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- All intelligence is carried by the server implementation rather than
- the protocol. What you build into more exotic servers is up to you.
- Server implementations may grow as needs dictate and time allows.
-
- 3.7 Special purpose servers
-
- There are two special server types (beyond the normal Gopher server)
- also discussed below:
-
- 1. A server directory listing can point at a CSO nameserver (the
- server returns a type character of '2') to allow a campus
- student-staff phonebook lookup service. This may show up on the
- user's list of choices, perhaps preceded by the icon of a phone-
- book. If this item is selected, the client software must resort
- to a pure CSO nameserver protocol when it connects to the
- appropriate host.
-
- 2. A server can also point at a "search server" (returns a first
- character of '7'). Such servers may implement campus network (or
- subnet) wide searching capability. The most common search servers
- maintain full-text indexes on the contents of text documents held
- by some subset of Gopher servers. Such a "full-text search
- server" responds to client requests with a list of all documents
- that contain one or more words (the search criteria). The client
- sends the server the selector string, a tab, and the search string
- (words to search for). If the selector string is empty, the client
- merely sends the search string. The server returns the equivalent
- of a directory listing for documents matching the search criteria.
- Spaces between words are usually implied Boolean ANDs (although in
- different implementations or search types, this may not
- necessarily be true).
-
- The CSO addition exists for historical reasons: at time of design,
- the campus phone-book servers at the University of Minnesota used the
- CSO protocol and it seemed simplest to just engulf them. The index-
- server is however very much a Gopher in spirit, albeit with a slight
- twist in the meaning of the selector-string. Index servers are a
- natural place to incorperate gateways to WAIS and WHOIS services.
-
- 3.7.1 Building CSO-servers
-
- A CSO Nameserver implementation for UNIX and associated documentation
- is available by anonymous ftp from uxa.cso.uiuc.edu. We do not
- anticipate implementing it on other machines.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 9]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- 3.7.2 Building full-text search servers
-
- A full-text search server is a special-purpose server that knows
- about the Gopher scheme for retrieving documents. These servers
- maintain a full-text index of the contents of plain text documents on
- Gopher servers in some specified domain. A Gopher full-text search
- server was implemented using several NeXTstations because it was easy
- to take advantage of the full-text index/search engine built into the
- NeXT system software. A search server for generic UNIX systems based
- on the public domain WAIS search engine, is also available and
- currently an optional part of the UNIX gopher server. In addition,
- at least one implementation of the gopher server incorperates a
- gateway to WAIS servers by presenting the WAIS servers to gopherspace
- as full-text search servers. The gopher<->WAIS gateway servers does
- the work of translating from gopher protocol to WAIS so unmodified
- gopher clients can access WAIS servers via the gateway server.
-
- By using several index servers (rather than a monolithic index
- server) indexes may be searched in parallel (although the client
- software is not aware of this). While maintaining full-text indexes
- of documents distributed over many machines may seem a daunting task,
- the task can be broken into smaller pieces (update only a portion of
- the indexes, search several partial indexes in parallel) so that it
- is manageable. By spreading this task over several small, cheap (and
- fast) workstations it is possible to take advantage of fine-grain
- parallelism. Again, the client software is not aware of this. Client
- software only needs to know that it can send a search string to an
- index server and will receive a list of documents that contain the
- words in the search string.
-
- 3.8 Item type characters
-
- The client software decides what items are available by looking at
- the first character of each line in a directory listing. Augmenting
- this list can extend the protocol. A list of defined item-type
- characters follows:
-
- 0 Item is a file
- 1 Item is a directory
- 2 Item is a CSO phone-book server
- 3 Error
- 4 Item is a BinHexed Macintosh file.
- 5 Item is DOS binary archive of some sort.
- Client must read until the TCP connection closes. Beware.
- 6 Item is a UNIX uuencoded file.
- 7 Item is an Index-Search server.
- 8 Item points to a text-based telnet session.
- 9 Item is a binary file!
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 10]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- Client must read until the TCP connection closes. Beware.
- + Item is a redundant server
- T Item points to a text-based tn3270 session.
- g Item is a GIF format graphics file.
- I Item is some kind of image file. Client decides how to display.
-
- Characters '0' through 'Z' are reserved. Local experiments should
- use other characters. Machine-specific extensions are not
- encouraged. Note that for type 5 or type 9 the client must be
- prepared to read until the connection closes. There will be no
- period at the end of the file; the contents of these files are binary
- and the client must decide what to do with them based perhaps on the
- .xxx extension.
-
- 3.9 User display strings and server selector strings
-
- User display strings are intended to be displayed on a line on a
- typical screen for a user's viewing pleasure. While many screens can
- accommodate 80 character lines, some space is needed to display a tag
- of some sort to tell the user what sort of item this is. Because of
- this, the user display string should be kept under 70 characters in
- length. Clients may truncate to a length convenient to them.
-
- 4. Simplicity is intentional
-
- As far as possible we desire any new features to be carried as new
- protocols that will be hidden behind new document-types. The
- internet Gopher philosophy is:
-
- (a) Intelligence is held by the server. Clients have the option
- of being able to access new document types (different, other types
- of servers) by simply recognizing the document-type character.
- Further intelligence to be borne by the protocol should be
- minimized.
-
- (b) The well-tempered server ought to send "text" (unless a file
- must be transferred as raw binary). Should this text include
- tabs, formfeeds, frufru? Probably not, but rude servers will
- probably send them anyway. Publishers of documents should be
- given simple tools (filters) that will alert them if there are any
- funny characters in the documents they wish to publish, and give
- them the opportunity to strip the questionable characters out; the
- publisher may well refuse.
-
- (c) The well-tempered client should do something reasonable with
- funny characters received in text; filter them out, leave them in,
- whatever.
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 11]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- Appendix
-
- Paul's NQBNF (Not Quite BNF) for the Gopher Protocol.
-
- Note: This is modified BNF (as used by the Pascal people) with a few
- English modifiers thrown in. Stuff enclosed in '{}' can be
- repeated zero or more times. Stuff in '[]' denotes a set of
- items. The '-' operator denotes set subtraction.
-
-
- Directory Entity
-
- CR-LF ::= ASCII Carriage Return Character followed by Line Feed
- character.
-
- Tab ::= ASCII Tab character.
-
- NUL ::= ASCII NUL character.
-
- UNASCII ::= ASCII - [Tab CR-LF NUL].
-
- Lastline ::= '.'CR-LF.
-
- TextBlock ::= Block of ASCII text not containing Lastline pattern.
-
- Type ::= UNASCII.
-
- RedType ::= '+'.
-
- User_Name ::= {UNASCII}.
-
- Selector ::= {UNASCII}.
-
- Host ::= {{UNASCII - ['.']} '.'} {UNASCII - ['.']}.
-
- Note: This is a Fully Qualified Domain Name as defined in RFC 1034.
- (e.g., gopher.micro.umn.edu) Hosts that have a CR-LF
- TAB or NUL in their name get what they deserve.
-
- Digit ::= '0' | '1' | '2' | '3' | '4' | '5' | '6' | '7' | '8' | '9' .
-
- DigitSeq ::= digit {digit}.
-
- Port ::= DigitSeq.
-
- Note: Port corresponds the the TCP Port Number, its value should
- be in the range [0..65535]; port 70 is officially assigned
- to gopher.
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 12]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- DirEntity ::= Type User_Name Tab Selector Tab Host Tab Port CR-LF
- {RedType User_Name Tab Selector Tab Host Tab Port CR-LF}
-
-
-
- Notes:
-
- It is *highly* recommended that the User_Name field contain only
- printable characters, since many different clients will be using
- it. However if eight bit characters are used, the characters
- should conform with the ISO Latin1 Character Set. The length of
- the User displayable line should be less than 70 Characters; longer
- lines may not fit across some screens.
-
- The Selector string should be no longer than 255 characters.
-
-
- Menu Entity
-
- Menu ::= {DirEntity} Lastline.
-
-
- Menu Transaction (Type 1 item)
-
- C: Opens Connection
- S: Accepts Connection
- C: Sends Selector String
- S: Sends Menu Entity
-
- Connection is closed by either client or server (typically server).
-
-
- Textfile Entity
-
- TextFile ::= {TextBlock} Lastline
-
- Note: Lines beginning with periods must be prepended with an extra
- period to ensure that the transmission is not terminated early.
- The client should strip extra periods at the beginning of the line.
-
-
- TextFile Transaction (Type 0 item)
-
- C: Opens Connection.
- S: Accepts connection
- C: Sends Selector String.
- S: Sends TextFile Entity.
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 13]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- Connection is closed by either client or server (typically server).
-
- Note: The client should be prepared for the server closing the
- connection without sending the Lastline. This allows the
- client to use fingerd servers.
-
-
- Full-Text Search Transaction (Type 7 item)
-
- Word ::= {UNASCII - ' '}
- BoolOp ::= 'and' | 'or' | 'not' | SPACE
- SearchStr ::= Word {{SPACE BoolOp} SPACE Word}
-
- C: Opens Connection.
- C: Sends Selector String, Tab, Search String.
- S: Sends Menu Entity.
-
- Note: In absence of 'and', 'or', or 'not' operators, a SPACE is
- regarded as an implied 'and' operator. Expression is evaluated
- left to right. Further, not all search engines or search
- gateways currently implemented have the boolean operators
- implemented.
-
- Binary file Transaction (Type 9 or 5 item)
-
- C: Opens Connection.
- S: Accepts connection
- C: Sends Selector String.
- S: Sends a binary file and closes connection when done.
-
-
- Syntactic Meaning for Directory Entities
-
-
- The client should interpret the type field as follows:
-
- 0 The item is a TextFile Entity.
- Client should use a TextFile Transaction.
-
- 1 The item is a Menu Entity.
- Client should use a Menu Transaction.
-
- 2 The information applies to a CSO phone book entity.
- Client should talk CSO protocol.
-
- 3 Signals an error condition.
-
- 4 Item is a Macintosh file encoded in BINHEX format
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 14]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- 5 Item is PC-DOS binary file of some sort. Client gets to decide.
-
- 6 Item is a uuencoded file.
-
- 7 The information applies to a Index Server.
- Client should use a FullText Search transaction.
-
- 8 The information applies to a Telnet session.
- Connect to given host at given port. The name to login as at this
- host is in the selector string.
-
- 9 Item is a binary file. Client must decide what to do with it.
-
- + The information applies to a duplicated server. The information
- contained within is a duplicate of the primary server. The primary
- server is defined as the last DirEntity that is has a non-plus
- "Type" field. The client should use the transaction as defined by
- the primary server Type field.
-
- g Item is a GIF graphic file.
-
- I Item is some kind of image file. Client gets to decide.
-
- T The information applies to a tn3270 based telnet session.
- Connect to given host at given port. The name to login as at this
- host is in the selector string.
-
- Security Considerations
-
- Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
-
- Authors' Addresses
-
- Farhad Anklesaria
- Computer and Information Services, University of Minnesota
- Room 152 Shepherd Labs
- 100 Union Street SE
- Minneapolis, MN 55455
-
- Phone: (612) 625 1300
- EMail: fxa@boombox.micro.umn.edu
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 15]
-
- RFC 1436 Gopher March 1993
-
-
- Mark McCahill
- Computer and Information Services, University of Minnesota
- Room 152 Shepherd Labs
- 100 Union Street SE
- Minneapolis, MN 55455
-
- Phone: (612) 625 1300
- EMail: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu
-
-
- Paul Lindner
- Computer and Information Services, University of Minnesota
- Room 152 Shepherd Labs
- 100 Union Street SE
- Minneapolis, MN 55455
-
- Phone: (612) 625 1300
- EMail: lindner@boombox.micro.umn.edu
-
-
- David Johnson
- Computer and Information Services, University of Minnesota
- Room 152 Shepherd Labs
- 100 Union Street SE
- Minneapolis, MN 55455
-
- Phone: (612) 625 1300
- EMail: dmj@boombox.micro.umn.edu
-
-
- Daniel Torrey
- Computer and Information Services, University of Minnesota
- Room 152 Shepherd Labs
- 100 Union Street SE
- Minneapolis, MN 55455
-
- Phone: (612) 625 1300
- EMail: daniel@boombox.micro.umn.edu
-
-
- Bob Alberti
- Computer and Information Services, University of Minnesota
- Room 152 Shepherd Labs
- 100 Union Street SE
- Minneapolis, MN 55455
-
- Phone: (612) 625 1300
- EMail: alberti@boombox.micro.umn.edu
-
-
-
- Anklesari, McCahill, Lindner, Johnson, Torrey & Alberti [Page 16]
-
-