A Beginner's Guide to the Internet/INTERNET.ISO/text/gopher/info/gopher.txt

Text File | 1996-05-06 | 5.4 KB | 101 lines

Gopher

Gopher is an extremely popular Internet tool, specifically a text
menuing system, developed at the University of Minnesota (the
"Golden Gophers").  Gopher is very helpful to new Internet users
who are trying to navigate around the Internet.  Gopherspace is
worldwide.  It comprises several hundred Gopher servers,
computers that contain indexes, and many thousands of Gopher
clients, computers that run the Gopher menu software that
accesses the servers' indexes.  All Gopher servers are public.
Unlike Telnet and FTP, GOPHER permits you to access data
without knowing beforehand where the information is located,
or even the details of the information sought.

GOPHER has become popular because it permits the user to browse
the Internet and discover things with very little difficulty.
GOPHERS are menu driven, with a hierarchical menu structure that
even novice computer users will find familiar and easy.  One of
the most useful characteristics of GOPHER are "links" to other
GOPHERS which are incorporated within the menu structure of every
GOPHER.  For example, if you move into a "history" directory on
one particular GOPHER, you may find one of your choices to be
"other history GOPHERS."  This feature lets a user follow the
trail of information without regard to its source or physical
location.

Multiverse's GOPHER services are completely RIP graphics
based, and provide a simple point-and-shoot interface.  With a
little practice, "navigating GOPHERSPACE" via Multiverse will
become second nature.

Multiverse's Gopher

On the Multiverse system, Gopher space can be accessed in either
of two ways.  On the Multiverse main menu you will see two
Internet buttons.  The first of these buttons, "Direct Internet
Access," when pressed, will yield the Multiverse Direct Internet
Access menu.  This menu contains a number of Internet service
access buttons, including one for Gopher.  Upon pressing the
Gopher button, a big blue box will appear and then disappear and
a Gopher menu will then appear.  This menu itself contains a
number of buttons that will open help files, as well as a number
of buttons that are fairly self-explanatory.  You can move around
in Gopher space by clicking on the button entitled "Other Gopher
and Information Servers."  That same blue box will come up while
the appropriate information is being transferred, and soon you
will see yet another menu.  Again, the items on this menu are
fairly self-explanatory, being countries, continents or
geographic regions.  Pressing any of these buttons will take you
to yet another menu and so on.  In this fashion, you can move
about Gopher space quite easily.

In the various Gopher menus that you traverse, you will note that
a menu bar appears near the bottom of the screen.  The first
button on the menu bar, a question mark, if pressed will call a
help screen that basically tells you how to navigate through some
of the Gopher menus.  The next button, "Quit," does exactly what
you would expect.  By pressing this button, you will leave Gopher
space and return to Multiverse.  The next button, "Previous,"
will take you to the previous Gopher menu, i.e., the menu that
was last on the screen.  In this way you can move backwards until
you reach a point where you want to branch off in a different
direction in Gopherspace.  The next button, "Search," brings up a
box that asks you to enter a word or phrase.  Gopher will then
search the descriptions for the files located in the menued items
currently on-screen for that word or phrase and point you to any
files meeting the search parameters, if any are found.  The
"History" button will provide you with the history of your
current travels in Gopher space.  The "Jump" button will bring up
a screen that permits you to designate a specific Gopher location
to which you wish to go.  By filling in the proper items, you can
immediately jump to that Gopher computer, wherever it might be.

Occasionally, you will reach a menu in Gopher space that includes
one or more text files.  Typically, you can load the text file
onto the screen and read it.  In addition, you can download it by
pressing the "ZModem" button that appears at the bottom of the
screen when the file is fully loaded.

Yet another way to enter Gopher space from Multiverse is by
clicking on the "Popular Internet Sites" button on the Multiverse
Main menu.  This will take you to a menu entitled "Popular
Internet Destinations."  This menu is broken down by subject
matter, sort of, and by clicking on any of the buttons in this
menu, you will be taken to yet another menu listing various
Internet sites.  You will note that the description of these
sites begins with a letter in parentheses.  Those sites with the
letter "G" are Gopher sites.  By clicking on that button, you
will immediately be taken to that specific Gopher site.  You will
see the same basic Gopherspace menus that you encountered in
"Direct Internet Access" Gopherspace, and you can move about
Gopherspace from the site you have selected in pretty much the
same way described above.

If you encounter a problem of any kind using Multiverse's Gopher,
please leave the sysop a message and we will do what we can to
correct the situation or provide you with the specific
information you need to correct it yourself.  If you encounter a
problem with another Gopher, you can send e-mail detailing the
problem to the system administrator of the remote site
responsible for maintaining the Gopher.