Gopher

The Gopher protocol is a TCP/IP Application layer protocol designed for

• distributing, 
• searching, and 
• retrieving documents 

over the Internet. Software using this protocol was a predecessor of (and later, an alternative to) the World Wide Web.

-The protocol offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on information stored on it.

-Its text menu interface is well-suited to computing environments that rely heavily on remote text-oriented computer terminals.

Its central Goals were:

• A file-like hierarchical arrangement that would be familiar to users
• A simple syntax
• A system that can be created quickly and inexpensively
• Extending the file system metaphor to include things like searches.

 

-Gopher combines document hierarchies with collections of services, including WAIS, the Archie and Veronica search engines, and gateways to other information systems such as ftp and Usenet

Gopher characteristics

-Gopher functions and appears much like a mountable read-only global network file system (and software, such as gopherfs, is available that can actually mount a Gopher server as a FUSE resource).

-At a minimum, whatever a person can do with data files on a CD-ROM, they can do on Gopher.

-A Gopher system consists of a series of hierarchical hyperlinkable menus. The choice of menu items and titles is controlled by the administrator of the server.

-File on a Web server, a file on a Gopher server can be linked to as a menu item from any other Gopher server. Many servers take advantage of this inter-server linking to provide a directory of other servers that the user can access.

Related technology

The master Gopherspace search engine is Veronica.

Veronica offers a keyword search of all the public Internet Gopher server menu titles.

A Veronica search produces a menu of Gopher items, each of which is a direct pointer to a Gopher data source.