Re: good gopher article by Cory Doctorow
On Mon, Feb 24 2020, Dave Gauer wrote:
> I imagine the pre-Web-era clients would have at least let you supply
> the host (and maybe port). But would they also have let you specify a
> selector? And if so, would you then need to supply the correct type (0
> for file, 1 for menu...) as well?
UMN gopher is still maintained (somewhat). From its manpage:
-p path
specify a specific selector string to send to the gopher server on
startup.
-T type
let the client know what type of object the -p option is pointing at.
...
EXAMPLES
gopher gopher.tc.umn.edu
Connect to the gopher server running on the computer gopher.tc.umn.edu
gopher -p "1/Information About Gopher" gopher.tc.umn.edu 70
Connect to the gopher server running on port 70 of the computer go‐
pher.tc.umn.edu and start at the menu retrieved with the selector string
1/Information About Gopher
gopher -p 7/indexes/Gopher-index/index -T 7 -i FAQ mudhoney.micro.umn.edu
Connect to the gopher server running on the computer mudhoney.mi‐
cro.umn.edu and start at the menu of items matching the string FAQ in
the index specified by the selector string 7/indexes/Gopher-index/index
It defaults to interpreting a selector as a menu.
> I imagine many of the early systems would have been set up to
> automatically connect to the institution's own starting menu just like
> you describe. But that's mere conjecture on my part.
Correct, or to the UMN's gopher site if there wasn't a local one.
John
Reply to: