From: timbl@info.cern.ch (Tim Berners-Lee)
Subject: Re: Comparison between Gopher, WAIS and WWW
Organization: CERN European Lab for Particle Physics
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 10:30:46 GMT

In article <92275.122410HANK@BARILVM.BITNET> Hank Nussbacher  
<HANK@BARILVM.BITNET>  writes:
> I have been trying for the past few weeks to examine the benefits of
> Gopher/WAIS/WWW and to see which would be the most appropriate to
> use.  I would like to present my findings so that others may benefit.
>  ...

He then goes on to make some good points but to make a
FUNDAMENTAL MISUNDERSTANDING that I would
like to correct now.  He summarises the situation by saying:

> Gopher is a menu driven system. 
..
> WAIS is a method of searching indexed text.
..
> WWW is hypertext. 

Let's be more accurate:

  WAIS   allows searches.
  Gopher allows searches AND menus.
  WWW    allows seraches AND menus AND hypertext.

There are lots of Gopher servers which have text indexes to them.
The gopher protocol allows a search to be made.  But WAIS does not allow
menus. OK?

Same with WWW. WWW has menus -- to the reader they are just simple hypertext.
And WWW has searches. But WAIS and Gopher don't have hypertext.

The big misunderstanding is to conclude:

> Lets try WWW.  We could create the following Hypertext: I could find
> an apartment to rent on McDoogal and then click to see the closest
> bus line and then click its time schedule and then click to see what
> Chinese restaurants are nearby.  The possibilities are endless.  It
> is super-cool.  But practical - no way.

But you *Don't Have To!*   Sure, if you *want* to invest the time, do!
But you just as well put up a menu system using W3.   As an information
provider you have the choice.  You can just use directories as menus
as in Gopher.  You may find that for the first few pages you prefer to
customise as hypertext because that page will be read by moer people
than anything else. But you can be lazy and just put up a whiole
directory tree.  If you browse around th web and think that all the
hypertext has been hand-edited you are getting very much th wrong idea.
Noone has the time.  Most of the data out there is generated by some
server which makes it LOOK like hypertext when in fact its just text files
or news or relational databases or Gnu Info or or or ....

> No university would invest
> the manpower to hypertext all this info (which takes enormous time
> and needs to be constantly updated) and add in all the necessary
> textual links.  When is Hypertext needed?

Wrong wrong wrong.   Hypertext turns out to be a neat idea BECAUSE
it  can represent menus to start with.  When you really get into it, you often  
find that you need a little more.  (Look at the Panda project which started
just so as to get a little descriptive text above a gopher menu!).


> This is where Gopher comes in.  A user is given a menu with 3
> submenus: Bus lines, restaurants, apartment rentals.  The user goes
> to the document, brings it up, scans it, perhaps prints it to show
> to a friend.  A secretary can be in charge of updating the file.  It
> is a straight ASCII file with no special codes or pointers.  In
> other words, it is easy to maintain and easy to retrieve.
> 
> The recent excellent Krol book "The Whole Internet Users Guide and
> Catalog" comes out in favor of WWW over Gopher.  I suspect this is a
> common trap us techo-dweebs fall into.  The more features, the more
> powerful, the better the system has to be.  It is the same pitfall
> people fell into 10 years ago when they ran out to buy a PC to
> balance their checkbooks.

The guy who bought the PC to balance his checkbook didn't realise
how the power and flexibility of the PC could help him *until he
brought it home*.
 
> If you wish to set up a campus information system that is simple to
> use, and simple to maintain, I suggest you look into Gopher.  If you
> wish to support a certain campus faculty (like medicine or law) that
> has many online documents that they wish to be able to search
> easily, look into WAIS.  If you have reference books and extra
> manpower available look into WWW.

Run Gopher server becuse of the excellent work which has been
put into making them easy to run on a Mac for example.
WAIS-index your data when you have a moment and a unix box.
A W3 client can access all these, and your FTP archive too.

Install W3 clients (like Viola), and you will have the option of putting links  
or text formatting in when you want to offer a better service. Later, you may  
want to write some hypertext to show people around who don't know what the  
thing are looking for is called. Or you may want to write a shell script to put  
you favorite database on-line.  Or at least as in introductory page to explain  
what your institute does. Then you can point them into the Gopher tree... and  
W3 readers will follow the links without realising the difference.  So a W3  
server will be appreaciated by your readers.

> Hope this helps.

I hope I have explained that one OK. I seem to have to do it from time to
time...  The comparison of the 3 systems is a W3 FAQ by the way (on the web).

Tim

> Hank Nussbacher
> Bar-Ilan University
> Israel
> hank@vm.biu.ac.il
_____________________________________________________________
Tim Berners-Lee                       timbl@info.cern.ch
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