Gopher item types Item types are described in gopher menus by a single number or (case specific) letter and act as hints to the client to tell it how to handle a specific media type in a menu, analogous to a MIME type. Every client necessarily must understand itemtypes 0 and 1. All known clients understand item types 0 through 9, g, and s, and all but the very oldest also understand file-types h and i. 0 = plain text file 1 = directory menu listing 2 = CSO search query 3 = error message 4 = BinHex encoded text file 5 = binary archive file 6 = UUEncoded text file 7 = search engine query 8 = telnet session pointer 9 = binary file g = GIF image h = HTML file i = informational message I = Image file of unspecified format. Client decides how to display. Often used for JPEG images. s = Audio file format, primarily a WAV file T = tn3270 session pointer A list of additional file-type definitions has continued to evolve over time, with some clients supporting them and others not. As such, many servers assign the generic 9 to every binary file, hoping that the client's computer will be able to correctly process the file.