GOPHER : Basic Training Manual

GOPHER is a protocol similar to HTTP but more spartan in appearance.
It’s kind of like FTP with a browser. There are two browsers included
with your SDF membership that you can use to browse gopherspace. The
browsers are called LYNX and GOPHER. I suggest using LYNX. Browsing with
GOPHER seems easy until you look at how the ‘w’ command works in
order to browse the gopherspace. The go command in LYNX is much easier to
use.

To browse SDF gopherspace:

    $ gopher gopher://sdf.org
Or
    $ lynx gopher://sdf.org

That will bring you to the top level of SDF’s gopherspace. Use the
online help included in the program’s interface in order to get to know
how to navigate directories.

After a short browse, you should have a pretty good idea of what gopher
is all about. Files! It’s all about the files.

To start building your gopherspace, try the following

    $ mkgopher

You will see this prompt (below):

    MKGOPHER>

Type ‘help’ to get a list and short description of commands. To get
started try this:

    MKGOPHER> edit gophermap

A gophermap is a kind of directory tool that allows you to map a gopher
directory. If you make a gophermap and a file like say, hello.txt, when
you close mkgopher, the program will create a directory in your home
containing the gophermap and your first file.

If the ‘editor’ is still open put these lines in your Gophermap, but
use a real tab in place of the <tab> in the gopher file resource locator
line below (the line that starts with 0). The first lines is merely a
salutation:

         _ _       ______
        /=V=\     |======|
       /=^=^=\    |=|_
      /=/ V \=\   |===|
     /=/     \=\  |=|___
    /=/       \=\ |======|
    
    This is my gopherspace.
    Welcome.
    
    0Hello World<tab>hello.txt

Type ctrl+x to close the file and accept the name as ‘gophermap’.

Now create hello.txt

    MKGOPHER> edit hello.txt

Inside the editor window, enter whatever ‘Hello’ text you would like.
For example:

    Hello, world!

Now type ctrl+x to close the editor.

Type ‘quit’ to exit mkgopher:

    MKGOPHER> quit

Now set the permissions for your gopherspace:

    $ mkgopher -p

Now check out your new hole:

    $ gopher gopher://sdf.org/1/users/username

Where ‘username’ is your SDF username.

For example, my site is gopher://sdf.org/1/username/byzt

If everything is correct, your hole should be live!

Hope that works for you and happy digging.

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