HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: peter@cujo.curtin.edu.au (Peter N Lewis)
Subject: Mac Gopher daemon, what do you want?
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 06:46:52 GMT

Hi All,

I'm in the process of adding Gopher services to my mac ftp daemon, I'm
interested in hearing from anyone who has any ideas on what they want to
be able to do.  At the moment, it will be set up so that you get gopher
access to the anonymous ftp site on the mac, with TEXT files as text
files (with ISO character translation), and all other files as BinHex
documents. But I'm not sure how to get the functionality of links like
the unix gopherd has.  I'm thinking along the lines of a file in any
directory that contains the equivalent of the .cap directory under unix
gopherd as well as links - ie, it would allow you to override the type
of files in the directory, give them different names, and add link files
to other places.  Is that more or less what people want?  Do you have
any other ideas?  Then there is the search files as well, any ideas on
how you want them to be implemented?  I suppose they could just be text
files, and have their type set by the "link" file as I described above?

Let me know what you think,
   Peter.

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
Peter N Lewis, NCRPDA, Curtin University       peter@cujo.curtin.edu.au
GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6001, AUSTRALIA              Ph: +61 9 368 2055
From: lindner@mudhoney (Paul Lindner)
Subject: Gopher1.1b2 now available..
Original-To: gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 23:20:50 -0600 (CST)
Reply-To: lindner@boombox.micro.umn.edu
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL5]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Distribution: comp

Beta testers and brave souls everywhere...  

Unix gopher1.1b2 is now available via anonymous ftp from
boombox.micro.umn.edu in /pub/gopher/Unix/beta.

Have fun kids...  Lots of new stuff.  gopherd.conf files, fixed ftp,
and more!!

As usual bug reports to lindner@boombox.micro.umn.edu...

Thanks

-- 
 | Paul Lindner | lindner@boombox.micro.umn.edu   | Slipping into madness
 |              | Computer & Information Services | is good for the sake
 | Gophermaster | University of Minnesota         | of comparision.
///// / / /    /////// / / / /  /  /  /   /      //// / / / /  /  /  /   /
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: gilbertd@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu (Don Gilbert)
Subject: Re: Date and time stamps
Organization: Biology, Indiana University - Bloomington
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 21:32:50 GMT

The gopher server needs to provide date + time info, to do what you want.
Most do not. Mine and a few others do (just open the IUBio gopher).

There is a simple patch for current Unix gopher servers that will
put date and time information on title lines, and will work properly
with all current gopher clients.  People can find it via gopher or ftp
to ftp.bio.indiana.edu, as IUBIo Software+Data/util/gopher/date+size.patch.
(It is also cleverly tucked in the iubio-gopher-v1.patch there that 
server maintainers may need to use iubio-wais modifications).

The new Gopher+ protocol also will optionally provide date and size 
information.

-- Don
-- 
Don Gilbert                                     gilbert@bio.indiana.edu
biocomputing office, biology dept., indiana univ., bloomington, in 47405
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: raman@cs.cornell.edu (T. V. Raman)
Subject: Weather service on gopher:
Keywords: weather gopher downwind
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 20:46:01 GMT



Hi!

I am trying to access the weather server with the following in my
.gopherrc:
#
Type=1
Name=interactive weather service (from u of michigan)
Path=
Host=downwind.sprl.umich.edu
Port=3000


The gopher client hangs, even though telnet to the same host and port
works immediately:

I would like to use gopher instead of regular telnet because I am
hoping that gopher will retrieve the weather forecast as a document
similar to what the gopher interface to the geographic server on
martini does.

Does anyone have something like this working for the weather server?

Thanks,

--Raman
-- 
   T. V. Raman <raman@cs.cornell.edu>Tel: (607)255-9202  R 272-3649
                       Office: 4116 Upson Hall,
Department of Computer Science, Cornell University Ithaca NY 14853-6201
                Res: 226 Bryant Avenue Ithaca NY 14850
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 10:15:56 +0800
Original-To: gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu
From: anielsen@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Nielsen)
Subject: Macintosh Tidbits index?
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Distribution: comp

Hello world, is it just me, or does the Gopher link to the WAIS index of
Macintosh Tidbits not work?  What am I doing wrong?  I'm using TurboGopher
1.0.5.

Regards, Andrew

_________________________________________________________________________
Andrew D. Nielsen                    Internet : anielsen@uniwa.uwa.edu.au
Computer Support Officer             AppleLink: AUST0190
Winthrop Technology                  
The University of Western Australia                    Tel: +61-9-3801757
NEDLANDS WA 6009   AUSTRALIA                           FAX: +61-9-3821688
From: gerry@keele.ac.uk (G.D.Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Subject: Re: Postscript & Gopher
Date: 16 Nov 92 10:19:42 GMT
Organization: Keele University, England
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

I've only just started reading this NG but has anyone discussed the 
possibility of supporting EPSI files with:-

%%EndComments
%%BeginPreview: 312 1749 1 1749
%000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
%...
%...

%%EndPreview

preview bitmaps in them. This would have 3 advantages:-

1) fast. The Preview could be converted to an X bitmap (say) which could be
   rendered to the screen rapidly. Most fullblown Postscript previewing takes 
   a while to get going. The print option could print out the Postscript
   file to a local Postscript printer if one exists.

2) safe - no trojan horses in a bitmap

3) don't need a Postscript interpreter at the client end

gerry
--
gerry pratt  --  workstation support  --  university of keele
email:  gerry@seq1.keele.ac.uk   *   telephone :  0782 583072
"these opinions are mine, mine, Mine.....ALL MINE I TELL YOU!"
From: leavitt@acsu.buffalo.edu (Jay Leavitt)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Subject: gopher on disability information
Keywords: disability
Date: 23 Nov 92 18:43:51 GMT
Reply-To: leavitt@ubvms.bitnet
Organization: University at Buffalo
Originator: leavitt@val-dor.cc.buffalo.edu



				 Announcing

				    CODI
		   (Cornucopia of Disability Information)

	CODI may be accessed by typing:

		      gopher val-dor.cc.buffalo.edu 70
		
					Jay Leavitt
					leavitt@ubvmsb.bitnet
From: zlsiimw@mcchpc.mcc.ac.uk (Mark Whidby)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Subject: Re: execing shell scripts
Date: 17 Nov 92 13:45:53 GMT
Reply-To: M.Whidby@mcc.ac.uk
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre

In article <1992Nov16.181914.29310@trentu.ca>, ccksb@trentu.ca (Ken Brown)
writes:
|> If this is so, how do I stop bin from being seen by clients as a
|> directory entry in the top level?  After all, /usr/local/gopherdata
|> contains other entries I wish to display but I don't wnat to display the
|> bin dir.

The directory bin (and others) are a special case; when gopher is parsing
the directory structure it skips over bin (and core, dev, etc, usr).
-- 
_____________________________________________________________
Mark Whidby, Distributed Systems, Manchester Computing Centre
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: ghm@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au (Geoff Miller)
Subject: Re: More people would use gopher if ...
Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 01:38:24 GMT

aldrich@leland.Stanford.EDU (Jeff Aldrich) writes:

>In article <92321.102821NLAFLAMM@vma.cc.nd.edu>, Nick Laflamme <NLAFLAMM@vma.cc.nd.edu> writes:
>> For what it's worth, the problem with "gopher" may be simply that it's
>> too cute and meaningless.

>C'mon, folks.  I refuse to believe that I'm the only one reading this group
>old and decrepit enough to understand the significance/origin of the name
>"gopher" in this general context.

You're not the only one, but I was beginning to think I was!

>...  The term began as a play on words, I 
>think in the auto racing community, referring to the kids who ran errands
>in the pits, which kids got ordered around with suggestions like "hey kid, 
>go for some solvent, go fer some coffee, gopher this'n'that..."  Thus the
>general-purpose fetcher of whatever is needful came to be known as a
>gopher, ok?

And this usage is not restricted to North America.  "Go-fers" are
known as such even where there are no gophers.

Besides, any name change is only going to create more confusion.
We're already publicising gopher as the answer to a maiden's prayer
(in the information retrieval sense, of course), so let's stick
with it.

Geoff Miller  (g-miller@adfa.oz.au)
Computer Centre, Australian Defence Force Academy
From: kean@cerridwen.UCS.ORST.EDU (Kean Stump)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Subject: Re: gnntp--a simple Gopher NNTP gateway
Date: 17 Nov 92 20:22:18 GMT
Article-I.D.: talon.1ebk9qINNlp7
Organization: University Computing Services, OSU
NNTP-Posting-Host: cerridwen.ucs.orst.edu

And, any site that wants an NNTP *feed* of any of the binaries newsgroups,
send me mail.  

No, I won't let you read them from my machine 8)

Kean
-- 
Kean Stump   
kean@ucs.orst.edu                                         (503)-737-4740 
Oregon State Network Operations                           Cthulu Saves, In Case 
OSU doesn't pay me enough to have official opinions.      It's Hungry Later
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: gilbertd@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu (Don Gilbert)
Subject: Re: A Gopher What Does Boolean 
Organization: Biology, Indiana University - Bloomington
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 22:41:07 GMT

In article <By18Hq.2ns@harpo.dev.uga.edu> bdesimon@uga.cc.uga.edu (Bert DeSimone) writes:
>One final note, and this is probably a TERRIBLE thing to do;  I have no idea
>what the potential impact could be.  I noticed that if you use iubio-wais
>waisindex, a new index file is created (index.dlm).  Sooooo, the first time
>after I made gopher with the -DBIO option and searched my old indices, I got
>a core dump and a .lock file for my efforts.  Then, I simply touched a file
>called index.dlm and all was fine.

This is a bug in my modifications, that the index.dlm is causing some
problems here, where it shouldn't.  The index.dlm is an addition to wais
index files needed only for those biology (or other) data that use symbols
within words.  The index.dlm file is simply a string of characters that
are used as word delimiters, both in indexing the data and in searching it.
In most cases, the index.dlm file should be ignored, though it will be 
created when the -DBIO options are enabled.  

If you create indices with another version of wais (w/o -DBIO) then use
them with a version of wais/gopher that has -DBIO enabled, the software
may crap out when looking for an index.dlm file.  You can make an empty
index.dlm and it should be happy, as you report.

-- 
Don Gilbert                                     gilbert@bio.indiana.edu
biocomputing office, biology dept., indiana univ., bloomington, in 47405
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: lamour@gong.mitre.org (Michael Lamoureux)
Subject: gopher.el? (was: Re: Is There an Open Look Xgopher?)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, Va.
	<1992Nov15.064138.22008@ra.msstate.edu>
	<YANDROS.92Nov16032734@deathtongue.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 17:44:39 GMT

In article <YANDROS.92Nov16032734@deathtongue.MIT.EDU> yandros@MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) writes:

> ->From: fwp@CC.MsState.Edu (Frank Peters)
>> Sacrificing user satisfaction in favor of some abstract ideal of
>> purity is, in my opinion, a bad idea.
>
> I must say that I agree, and I suspect that most other people will,
> too.  One of the major advantages of gopher that I can see is that the
> protocol is simple enough that building clients is trivial; for people
> who want an `pure' interface, there's always the one you mentioned:
> telnet.

	Hmmm, I always thought "pure interface" meant one that worked
in emacs ;-)   If it's really that trivial, has someone bothered to
create an emacs interface to gopher?  Sorry if this is a stupid
question, but I've been concentrating on WAIS lately, and decided it
was finally time to look at gopher and WWW.

Thanks,
Michael
lamour@mitre.org
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: lbrintle@tinyblue.cs.uiowa.edu (Lee Brintle)
Subject: Re: Gopher and Security
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 20:24:43 GMT
Reply-To: lbrintle@tinyblue.cs.uiowa.edu (Lee Brintle)
Organization: U of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

In article <1992Nov22.155324.19094@news.acns.nwu.edu>, john@math.nwu.edu
(John Franks) writes:
|> While we're talking wish list, let me echo the comments made several
|> times here earlier, that it would be much easier to maintain a gopher
|> if all the .cap/* files for a directory were combined in a single file
|> for each diretory which could also contain all the .link entries.
|> Maybe for Gopher+ ?

At the gopher conference, I presented our hacks to the gopher server, one
of which did what you describe.  Basically, we have .mnu files which are
.Link files.  The response line for an item might be:
    1/about/about.mnu
where about.mnu is one of these files.  As an example, I'll include our main-
menu file:

.info
   Welcome to Panda at the University of Iowa.  For a quick listing of
help, type a question mark (?) and press return or enter.  For a longer
help listing, type "help" and press return.

.endinfo

Name=About Panda
Type=1
Path=1/.about

Type=1
Name=General Information
Path=1/.general

Type=1
Name=Iowa City Information
Path=1/.ic

Type=1
Name=Online Information Services
Path=1/.online

Type=1
Name=University of Iowa Information
Path=1/.uiowa

Which produces a screen like the following:

Page 1 of 1                        Main Menu

    Welcome to Panda at the University of Iowa.  For a quick listing of
 help, type a question mark (?) and press return or enter.  For a longer
 help listing, type "help" and press return.

-->   1.  About Panda...
      2.  General Information...
      3.  Iowa City Information...
      4.  Online Information Services...
      5.  University of Iowa Information...


They are *much* easier to set up than using .link files and the such.  In
particular, we never have "hidden" (dot) files in our tree (except for the
above, which are so heavily cross-referenced we're afriad to get rid of 'em)
and our file names are almost always sensible.


Lee Brintle                      | ``And so, I leave you with this final word:
Project Panda                    |              twang.''
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: silvert@cs.dal.ca (Bill Silvert)
Subject: Re: New/additional gopher at the Univ of Utah
Reply-To: silvert@biome.bio.ns.ca (Bill Silvert)
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 21:21:22 GMT

In <1e60nsINN69k@nigel.msen.com> emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti) writes:

>: Not much of a solution.  Aside from the fact that many fields of
>: interest are not adequately represented in Usenet newsgroups (like
>: marine biology), this is a very inefficient way to proceed.

>This suggests that a straightforward advertising and publicity and
>group creation approach (probably say "bionet.marine" would be a good
>one to start up) would maximize the effect of your gopher building
>efforts.  At least then you could get the word out to quite a few
>people, by adding the information about your gopher server to the
>calls for discussion and for votes for the new group.  I know that
>BIONET goes to places like Woods Hole, so you have at least some of
>a ready target audience already.

I'd like to hear from others on whether setting up a gopher network
really requires months of hard work, or whether there is ANY interest in
making it easier to find gophers that deal with particular subjects.

By the way, it isn't surprising that BIONET reaches Wood's Hole, since
it deals primarily with molecular biology, and the are lots of molecular
biologists down there.  Not much help for marine ecologists like me.

I get the message that Ed wants me to play a major leadership role in
stimulating the use of electronics communications by my scientific
colleagues.  But I'm a lazy guy who just wants to make maximum use of
existing facilities without devoting my career to it.  The point of my
postings is that I think that other gopher managers will face this
problem eventually as gopher proliferates, and the sooner we give some
thought to how we address it, the easier it will be for all of us.
-- 
William Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division, Bedford Inst. of Oceanography
P. O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2Y 4A2.  Tel. (902)426-1577
InterNet Address: silvert@biome.bio.ns.ca
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: bdesimon@uga.cc.uga.edu (Bert DeSimone)
Subject: A Gopher What Does Boolean 
Organization: UCNS
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 20:49:01 GMT

I am sending this to this list in the hope that it will help some folks and
maybe generate some new discussion on Don Gilbert's WONDERFUL modifications
to the wais-b5 distribution.  The few paragraphs that follow relate to the
b2 release of gopher1.1.
                               *********** 
Using: iubio-wais-8b5, gopher1.1b2, SunOS 4.1.1
 
If you want to use booleans "and" and "not" and partial word searches,
you can either comment out the -DBIO option on CFLAGS in the iubio-wais
distribution or leave it be.  If you leave it in, include -DBIO on 
SERVEROPTS in the gopher1.1b2 file Makefile.config.  At least this seemed to
work fine for me and it makes sense.
 
OK, this is a change.  You always had to make a soft link to wais
directories ir and ui.  You now need to make a soft link to bin. Do this
before making gopher (these links go in the gopher top-level directory).
Apparently this was done so you don't have to monkey with the gopherd Makefile
and WAISOBJ.  Nice touch.
 
After making gopher with iubio-wais, you can use your old indexes if you
eliminated -DBIO.  If you used the -DBIO option, you will need to make your
indices with the iubio-wais waisindex .... maybe ....
 
One final note, and this is probably a TERRIBLE thing to do;  I have no idea
what the potential impact could be.  I noticed that if you use iubio-wais
waisindex, a new index file is created (index.dlm).  Sooooo, the first time
after I made gopher with the -DBIO option and searched my old indices, I got
a core dump and a .lock file for my efforts.  Then, I simply touched a file
called index.dlm and all was fine.
From: benchoff@groupw.cns.vt.edu (Phil Benchoff)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Subject: Problems with Unix gopherd
Date: 19 Nov 92 16:00:47 GMT
Organization: Va Tech Communications Resources

I am running Unix gopher 1.03 under Ultrix and have a problem.  The same
problem appears with gopher 1.02. The problem appears if gopher is started
by inetd or not.  When a client connects and gopherd decides to rebuild
the .cache, there is a delay of about 30 seconds.  This delay happens
every time if I disable the cache.  The delay happens if I remove all
items from the root menu.  It still takes about 30 seconds to get the
nothing found message.  Debug output does not indicate any errors.

Anyone have any ideas what is going on?

Phil.Benchoff@cns.vt.edu
From: benchoff@GroupW.cns.vt.edu (Phil Benchoff)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Subject: Re: Problems with Unix gopherd
Date: 20 Nov 92 17:37:17 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

As usual, the network comes through with a solution.....

#From: riddle@is.rice.edu (Prentiss Riddle)
#Subject: Re: Problems with Unix gopherd
#Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
#
#In article <9795@vtserf.cc.vt.edu> you write:
#> ................  When a client connects and gopherd decides to rebuild
#> the .cache, there is a delay of about 30 seconds.  ..................
#
#You may have thought of this, but just in case:
#
#Are you sure you don't have any lurking dot files in the gopher
#directory?  Particularly large ones?
#
#I was bit by my mistake of hiding a large file containing raw data in a
#".something" file under a gopher directory.  The gopher server tried to
#scan the file as if it were a .links file every time it rebuilt the
#.cache file.  The delays were a lot longer than 30 seconds in my
#case...
#
#-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle@rice.edu

Sure enough, I was keeping my gopher log in the gopher root as .logfile.
I moved it elsewhere and the problem seems to be cured.

Thanks for the help Prentiss!
Phil
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
From: cowboy@trans.csuohio.edu (Joe Rosenfeld)
Subject: Re: More people would use Gopher if...
Organization: Cleveland State University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 12:29:05 GMT

Richard W. Wiggins (rww@mugwump.cl.msu.edu) wrote:
: In article <92321.102821NLAFLAMM@vma.cc.nd.edu> Nick Laflamme writes:
: > For what it's worth, the problem with "gopher" may be simply that it's
: > too cute and meaningless.
: 
: Nick, you raise some interesting points, but Gopher is far too widespread
: and entrenched, and too known by that name already. The name's a done deal. 
: In any case, as we evangelize our campus about this neat new tool, we have
: not encountered a single soul who resists the name.  The sense of a "go fer"  
: for data is well accepted.  And giving a little credit to the Golden 
: Gophers for their fine contribution to the net shouldn't bother anyone.
: 
: The old joke is that if IBM named a light bulb, they'd call it a 
: "Multipurpose Incandescent Source System Facility."  We have a perfectly 
: fine two syllable word for this tool.  Let's worry about how to improve 
: Gopher, not how to rename it.
: 
: /Rich Wiggns, Gopher Coordinator, Michigan State U

Well, If people refuse to use gopher only because they do not like the name,
then they are pretty shallow, since they are ignoring the obvious power of
a GOPHER server only because of a name.  That is pretty pathetic, and I am
glad we are not associated with such people.

Gopher!

Joe

Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher