From bronze!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!CONVEX.CSC.FI!Rob.Harper Fri Feb 14 07:41:20 EST 1992
Article: 2001 of bionet.software
Path: bronze!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!CONVEX.CSC.FI!Rob.Harper
From: Rob.Harper@CONVEX.CSC.FI (Rob Harper)
Newsgroups: bionet.software
Subject: BioBit No22 (Go for it with Gopher)
Message-ID: <199202131548.AA01763@convex.csc.fi>
Date: 13 Feb 92 17:48:32 GMT
Sender: daemon@genbank.bio.net
Distribution: bionet
Lines: 353


     2222222222                       2222222222
     2222222222                       2222222222
     2222  2222   2222   2222222222   2222  2222   2222   222222222222
     22222222            2222222222   22222222            222222222222
     22222222     2222   2222  2222   22222222     2222       2222
     2222  2222   2222   2222  2222   2222  2222   2222       2222
     2222222222   2222   2222222222   2222222222   2222       2222
     2222222222   2222   2222222222   2222222222   2222       2222

                                 No 22
    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
                        BIO-NAUT NEWSLETTER 12-2-92
                       << EDITED BY ROBERT HARPER >>
    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


		         GO FOR IT WITH GOPHER

INTRODUCTION.

   In this edition of BioBit I will take a look a gopher, and will
   give some examples of its use, using a gopher in Sweden. First of
   all the name gopher has already caused some confusion. When the
   newsgroup alt.gopher opened up quite a few people thought it was
   alt.golfer and were all set to swap stories about golf clubs and
   sand traps

   Anyway if one of the best terminal emulations in the world is
   called KERMIT then perhaps GOPHER will become equally well known.
   I have no idea why the software should be given this name...could
   it be the mascot of the University of Minnesota... is it a play on
   words GOPHER=GO FOR.

   Basically that is what gopher does, it allows you to go to
   different places on the network and get information. In the
   examples below I will show how you can use gopher to run an archie
   session, look at WWW, even peek into the CONVEX computer here at
   the Finnish State Computer Centre to see how we have used gopher to
   help users find out what is on the system. But first things first.
   
GOPHER PHILOSOPHY
   
The Internet Gopher is a distributed document delivery service.
It allows a neophyte user to access various types of data
residing on multiple hosts in a seamless fashion.  This is
accomplished by presenting the user a hierarchical arrangement
of documents and by using a client-server communications model.
In addition to browsing through hierarchies of documents, gopher
users can submit queries to gopher search servers. The search
servers typically have full-text indexes for a set of gopher
documents; the response to a query is a list of documents that
matched the search criteria.

Internet Gopher servers accept simple queries (sent over a TCP 
connection), and respond by sending the client a document or a 
list of documents. Since this is a distributed protocol there can
be many servers... but the client software hides this fact from 
the user. We currently use this technology at the Center for
Scientific Computing here in Finland to support users on our CONVEX 
mainframe.


AMERICAN GOPHER CONNECTION

Interested folks can try out the curses based UNIX client by opening
a telnet session to consultant.micro.umn.edu [128.101.95.23]. 
Login as gopher with no password.


ANONYMOUS FTP SITE FOR GOPHER SOFTWARE

All the gopher client and server software is available for anonymous ftp
from boombox.micro.umn.edu [128.101.95.95]; look in /pub/gopher.
Currently there are gopher clients for Mac, PC and Unix (curses-based)
available from the University of Minnesota. 

Version 1.1 of the PC Gopher client can be obtained by anonymous FTP from 
boombox.micro.umn.edu in the directory pub/gopher/PC_client/version_1.20
The PC Gopher client runs on most networked PCs, but requires that 
you have loaded the appropriate Clarkson packet driver for your network 
ethernet card. The PC gopher software has a TurboVision user interface
so both keyboard and mouse are supported... and you don't need to run
MS Windows.       

The University of St. Thomas wrote a NeXT gopher client available for 
anonymous ftp from cs.stthomas.edu (140.209.5.1)
directory gopher, file Gopher_1.0b.tar.Z (51605 bytes).
 
Summary of Internet Gopher Software.

Macintosh Gopher client written in HyperCard.
Macintosh Gopher Server software.
PC Gopher Client with a Borland Turbo Vision Interface.
Full Text Indexing servers for NeXT machines.
NeXT Gopher client (provided by Max Tardiveau of the University of St.
                    Thomas.) 

Questions, problems, feedback or bug reports may be directed to the
development team at  gopher@boombox.micro.umn.edu. 

MAILING LIST FOR GOPHER NEWS 

There is a mailing list "gopher-news" where bug fixes are announced or new
versions of gopher software. If you would like to subscribe to gopher-news,
please send e-mail to gopher-news-request@boombox.micro.umn.edu.


OK Now for an example session with a gopher system set up in Sweden
To access the system you give the following command. "telnet gopher.sunet.se"
and login as gopher

sun4 /mnt/home/csc/harper 8> telnet gopher.sunet.se
Trying...
Connected to sunic.sunet.se.
Escape character is '^]'.
SunOS UNIX (sunic)
login: gopher

         Internet Gopher v0.5 Copyright 1991 Univ. of Minnesota

                                 Root Directory

          1.  Info about this Gopher Server.
          2.  Nordic Information Services/
          3.  CCITT Blue Book/
          4.  Requests for Comments (RFC)/
          5.  PD Software FTP Archive/
          6.  Internet Libraries/
    -->   7.  World Wide Web/
          8.  Other Gopher and Information Servers/

These examples have been done with the Unix curses-based software. The MAC
hypercard stack is a point and click nice visual interface, but since we have
to limit ourselves to plain ascii on Usenet then the Unix curses-based style
gives the clearest presentation. So you can move with the cursor keys and 
choose option 7 so you can have a look at WWW down at CERN in Switzerland. 
You will notice that once you have selected that option there is a 
symbol <TEL> directly after it. This means you are about to open up a 
telnet session to WWW.

          Internet Gopher v0.5 Copyright 1991 Univ. of Minnesota

                                 World Wide Web

   -->    1.  World Wide Web (at CERN) <TEL>

               Warning!!!!!, you are about to leave the Internet
                  Gopher program and connect to another host.
             If you get stuck press the control key and the ] key,
                               and then type quit
                         Now connecting to info.cern.ch
                      Use the account name "www" to log in
                           Press return to connect:

After pressing return you get into WWW. WWW is hypertext based software
and that lots of numbers are sprinkled thoughout the text. If you choose
a number then you are automatically linked to the documents that are hidden
behind it. If we chose option 7 then we get into a list of all public CERN
news groups.

CERN Information

   CERN is the European Particle Physics Labpratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
   Select by number information here, or elsewhere (Return for more).

  Help[1]                On this program, or the World-Wide Web project[2].
  Phone book[3]          People, phone numbers, accounts and email addresses.
                         See also the analytical Yellow Pages[4], or the same
                         index in French: Pages Jaunes[5].
  CC Documentation[6]    Index of computer centre documentation, newsletters,
                         news, help files, etc...
  News[7]                A complete list of all public CERN news groups, such
                         as news from the CERN User's Office[8], CERN computer
                         center news[9], student news[10]. See also  Private
                         groups[11] and Internet news[12].

>From other sites:-
1-23, <RETURN> for more, Quit, or Help:7


                       List of public CERN news groups

                          PUBLIC NEWS GROUPS AT CERN

  AIX6000[1]              General news about RISC 6000 workstations at CERN
  APOLLO[2]               General news about HP/APOLLO workstations at CERN
  AS[3]                   Application Software
  AT[4]                   AT News system
  ATARI[5]                New software selection, descriptions
  CERES[6]                CERES/NA45 group news
  CERN[7]                 Cern Users' office
  CMC[8]                  CERN Micro Club
  COOPIN[9]               COOPIN News system

FIND <keywords>, 1-38, Back, <RETURN> for more, Quit, or Help:

If you type quit then the telnet session to WWW gets shut down and you find
yourself back in GOPHER. If you choose option 2 from the main GOPHER menu
you will be given a selection of Nordic Inforamtion Services. One service
that you will all be familiar with by now, is the archie server at 
nic.funet.fi

As you can see by choosing option 5 you open up a telnet session to 
the "number one ftp site in the Galaxy" I won't go into details
about archie. If you want to read more about this service get the 
back issue of BioBit that deals with the subject.  


             Internet Gopher v0.5 Copyright 1991 Univ. of Minnesota

                          Nordic Information Services

          1.  NORDUnet NIC Information Service/
          2.  BASUN (SUNET info-server) <TEL>
          3.  X.500 (Directory service) <TEL>
          4.  NORWAY Information Services/
    -->   5.  ARCHIE at funet.fi <TEL>
          6.  Gothenburg University & Chalmers Inst. of Technology (test)/
          7.  Info Service at the University of Lund <TEL>
          8.  Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm(experimental)/

               Warning!!!!!, you are about to leave the Internet
                  Gopher program and connect to another host.
             If you get stuck press the control key and the ] key,
                               and then type quit
                         Now connecting to nic.funet.fi
                    Use the account name "archie" to log in

Trying 128.214.6.100 ...
Connected to nic.funet.fi.
Escape character is '^]'.
SunOS UNIX (nic)
login: archie

               Finnish University and Research Network FUNET
                        archie.funet.fi ARCHIE

                 Type `help' for more information about Archie.
                   This Archie is located in Finland, Europe.

Current archie servers (as of Nov 5 1991):

 archie.mcgill.ca    (132.206.2.3)        McGill University, Montreal, Canada
 archie.sura.net     (128.167.254.179)    SURAnet, College Park, Maryland, USA
 archie.ans.net      (147.225.1.31)       ANS, New York, USA
 archie.unl.edu      (129.93.1.14)        Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
 archie.funet.fi     (128.214.6.100)      FUNET, Helsinki, Finland
 archie.au           (128.184.1.4)        Deakin University, Geelong, Australia archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.3.7)        Imperial College, London, UK

All of these are available via  telnet, E-mail, and client (prospero)
interfaces.  Avoid using trans-oceanic connections.
In case you wish to have search results returned via E-mail, please make
REQUESTS via E-mail also, NOT via this interactive telnet session!
Send your mail request to:   archie@`archiehost'
If you have questions, send them to  archie-l@nic.funet.fi  for our local
management to resolve, or   archie-l@cs.mcgill.ca  for the creators of Archie.

archie>bye

You could do a "prog xgopher" while in archie to find out sites that have
the Xwindows software for gopher... but for now we will just say bye
and get back to homebase in Sweden. Back at the main menu if you choose
option 8 you can have a look at other gophers and information servers.
In this menu, the first on the list (purely by coincidence and by reason
of alphabetical order) is the Centre for Scientific Computing the place where
I work. We have been using gopher to help users find out what applications
programmes we have on our mainframe.

            Internet Gopher v0.5 Copyright 1991 Univ. of Minnesota

                                     Europe

   -->    1.  Centre for Scientific Computing (Finland)/
          2.  Norway (information on the academic network)/
          3.  Queen Mary & Westfield College (London)/
          4.  Sweden (experimental Swedish gopher team)/
          5.  University of Graz Austria/
          6.  University of Oslo/

By choosing option 1 you can now read about the setup at CSC. We are far
from perfect but we do try harder. By choosing option 4 you get a listing
of our applications. I think it is good to be able to see how other
computer centres manage things... please have a "walk" around our centre
and see what we have to offer... perhaps you might learn something from
the way we do things. 

            Internet Gopher v0.5 Copyright 1991 Univ. of Minnesota

                   Centre for Scientific Computing (Finland)

          1.  Tietoa Gopherista/
          2.  Etsint{ helpist{ <?>
          3.  computers/
   -->    4.  applications/
          5.  tools/
          6.  graphics/
          7.  accounting/
          8.  software_list.
          9.  network/
          10. general/

Our Convex mainframe has only been commissioned about 6 months ago and
gopher is a very fine way to give user support. We have different 
directories for different scientific disiplines and users can get basic
help regarding the use of programmes simply by browsing through the files
with gopher. Chemistry and Physics are well represented on the mainframe
and molbio is just begining to get air under its wings.

          Internet Gopher v0.5 Copyright 1991 Univ. of Minnesota

                                  applications

          1.  physics/
          2.  chemistry/
          3.  fluid_mechanics/
          4.  mathematics/
          5.  others/
          6.  statistics/
          7.  structural_analysis/
    -->   8.  molbio/
          9.  el/


That is about it. You must be asking yourself is it easy to install
and run. Well I wrote about gopher on bionet.software on the 10th of Feb
and today on the 12th Don Gilbert had his ftp directories available for
reading via gopher. So you can draw the conclusion that either gopher is
a neat bit of software or Don Gilbert is a maniac for work. In this case
perhaps both are true. 

WRAPING IT UP

This aricle was prepared with the help of WAIS to retreive information on
gopher from the comp.archives.source. Thanks are due to Petri Ojala for giving
a demo of WWW and the Swedish gopher, and to Pekka Kytolakso for installing
gopher on our mainframe.

The Internet Gopher Development Team can be reached via e-mail as
gopher@boombox.micro.umn.edu.  If you prefer snail mail, they can be reached
at: 

Internet Gopher Team
132 Shepherd Labs
100 Union Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Rob " go for it " Harper

   Rob Harper                     /   E-mail:          harper@convex.csc.fi    
   Finnish State Computer Centre  /   Molbio/software: harper@nic.funet.fi
   P.O. Box 40, SF-02101 Espoo    /   Telephone:       +358 0 457 2076
   Finland                        /   Fax:             +358 0 457 2302


.
