From its proud beginning at the University of Minnesota (Home of the Golden Gophers), Gopher is a program that provides menu access to a wealth of different types of Internet resources and has grown to include over 2,000 servers in dozens of countries. With gopher you do not have to worry about which Internet program or protocol to use, gopher will connect you to the menu item you choose automatically. Gopher burrows through the various Internet tunnels and brings the information you request back to your computer screen.
A lot. Electronic books and journals, library catalogs, databases, images and artwork, music, phone books, job listings, grants information, Mac and DOS software, campus wide information systems, government documents, listings of non-credit computer courses at UT, movie reviews, worldwide computer resources organized by subject, books and articles explaining how to use the Internet, access to Internet freenets, WAIS, WorldWideWeb, and thousands of other resources too numerous to mention.
Each gopher menu item has a script which establishes the appropriate type of connection to the item you have chosen. There are also links between gophers so that you can move from one gopher to another. In gopherspace there is no difference between using a gopher in Finland and one in Austin. Gopher works best if the work is shared between two computers, between a gopher server and a gopher client.
In the summer of 1993, there were over 20 gopher client programs available via anonymous ftp that could be mounted on various PC's, workstations, and mainframes. Currently Turbogopher is recommended for the Mac, and PC Gopher III for DOS machines. Recommended gopher clients are available through anonymous ftp on ftp.texshare.utexas.edu. For a comprehensive list, read the Gopher FAQ posted every two weeks to the USENET Newsgroup comp.infosystems.gopher. This is also available on the UT Austin gopher under the directories UT Austin/Computation Center/UNIX/Usenet
When viewing an item or directory on gopher, you can set a bookmark to that item. Your set of personal bookmarks is in effect your own personalized gopher menu. By viewing your bookmarks and selecting menu items, you will be automatically connected to that gopher source.
If you are unsure of where an item might be in the various worldwide gopher directories, you can use Veronica (a menu item on gopher) to do a keyword search of all gopher menu items. Veronica will then give you a list of "hits." If you select an item from this list you will automatically be connected to it. Jughead is a search service similar to Veronica, but it only searches the gopher menus on the gopher you are using at the moment. This can be useful if you remember which gopher has what you want and you can't remember where it is in the menu hierarchy.
RGFN User's Guide Copyright 1995: You may copy this guide and distribute it for educational purposes only and not for any other purpose.
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