HI!
Reference sheet prepared by Jolene M. Morris, District Technology Director, Grand Co. School District
In order to find information on the Internet, the user needs to use many different commands. Gopher is client/server software created to find information without having to use all those commands. Gopher can be thought of as a powerful menu.
The original Gopher was developed at the University of Minnesota in April of 1991. The term comes from the fact that Minnesota is the Gopher State. Some Gopher "purists" look at the collection of Gophers around the world as a living, growing entity. These purists use such terms as gopherspace. The Gopher is always changing and growing.
Gophers have many advantages over using the commands such as telnet and ftp:
Directory trees are displayed as lists in on outline format for easier navigation.
Links can be made to other networks on the Internet so your network doesn't have to contain all the information.
Gopher client software is available for a wide-variety of computer platforms.
Many gopher clients have features such as bookmarks and self-programmable menu screens.
Gophers can handle programs and pictures in addition to text.
Connecting to a Gopher Server
To a Gopher server, you must have the Gopher client on your network. From the prompt, simply type gopher (or press F4 if you are using Minuet).
The Gopher client software will automatically connect with the Gopher server software set up as the default Gopher server. You may also specify which Gopher you want to use by typing the Gopher server's address after the gopher command. The UtahLink Gopher address is:
Gopher Commands (UNIX)
There are many Gopher commands. Some of them differ depending upon the Gopher client you are using. However, there are a few basic Gopher commands that you will use most of the time. You do not need to press <Return> at the end of these commands. These commands are case-sensitive (upper and lower case are important):
Command Explanation/Syntax
? Help
q Quit (with yes/no verify)
Q Quit (without verify)
u Up to parent menu
m Main menu
s Save this text item to a file
D Download this binary item
/ Search
a Add item as a bookmark
A Add menu as a bookmark
v View bookmark list
d Delete a bookmark item
= Information about item
Gopher Menu Symbols
Each menu item on a Gopher list will have a symbol beside it. This symbol lets you know what type of an item it is:
Symbol Item Type
. Text file for display
<?> Database to search
/ Another menu
<tel> Telnet session
<cso> CSO Name Server
<bin> Binary application file
<Picture> Binary picture file
<) Binary sound file
Veronica
Veronica is a search tool to find specified words on the Gopher menus. The Gopher is a series of many, many menus and you will often remember seeing an item but can't remember where it was. You can use search qualifiers such as and, or, and not to narrow your search. You may also use a space to represent the Boolean and operator. You can also use an asterisk (*) to represent any number of extra characters.
Veronica was developed at the University of Nevada at Reno in November 1992. The Veronica server works very much like an Archie server -- every week or so, the Veronica server would poll every known Gopher server and ask for a copy of all its menus. These menus would be compiled and indexed so Veronica could search for items in the database.
Veronica will search until it reaches the end of Gopherspace or until it locates 200 entries matching your criteria. As such, Veronica searches take a lot of time -- be patient. You can instruct Veronica to search more or less entries by adding a "maximum parameter" at the end of your search criteria. Suppose you want to search for all menu items containing the words math and education. But you want to stop searching when Veronica finds 50 listings -- since it takes a lot of time to do a Veronica search, you'll want to narrow your search even more if Veronica finds 50 listings with just math and education. Your search criteria would be:
math education -m50
Veronica will appear as a menu item. You'll see something like this:
Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica/
If you can't find the veronica on your Gopher server, try a menu item listing
Other Gopher and Information servers/
NOTE: It is a good idea to a (add) the Veronica menu item to your bookmark.
Jughead
Jughead is like a limited Veronica. Veronica searches all of gopherspace whereas Jughead searches a smaller area of gopherspace. Jughead was developed at the UofU Computer Center in March 1993 by Rhett (Jonzy) Jones. Jughead allows you to search just one particular Gopher or a couple of Gophers instead of the entire Veronica database. Like Veronica, Jughead must be set up as a server before your Gopher will be able to use it.
Veronica & Jughead Acronyms?
The terms Veronica and Jughead were simply used because of the individuals in the Archie Andrews comics. There are rumors that Veronica stands for "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Netwide Index to Computerized Archives" and that Jughead stands for "Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display". These rumors are false -- Veronica simply stands for Veronica and Jughead simply stands for Jughead.
One interesting fact is that the Jughead of Archie Andrews fame had the last name of Jones, and the Internet Jughead was created by Rhett Jones.
