Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 10:12:09 -0600 From: BITNET list server at UA1VM (1.8a) Subject: File: "MAP22 LESSON" MAP22: GOPHERMAIL "(T)he International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) designated Oct. 14 as World Standards Day to recognize those volunteers who have worked hard to define international standards .... The United States celebrated World Standards Day on Oct. 11; Finland celebrated on Oct. 13; and Italy celebrated on Oct. 18" -- Open Systems Today, 10/31/94 One of the most frustrating experiences in the world is being told that you can't do something. For those of you who only have "Level One" Internet connectivity, this week must have been especially trying. Fortunately, thanks to a server program called GopherMail, those of you with Level One connectivity can now access all of the neat Gopher sites we talked about this week using nothing but a simple e-mail letter There are really just four basic steps to using GopherMail: 1. You send an e-mail letter to a GopherMail server. In your letter to the GopherMail server, it really does not matter what you put in the subject line or the body of your letter, so long as you don't use the word "help" ("help" tells the GopherMail server to send you its help file). 2. GopherMail responds to your letter by sending you its main Gopher menu in the body of an e-mail letter. 3. You respond to this Gopher menu letter by forwarding it back to the GopherMail server after you have cleaned the letter up a little and marked which menu options you want the GopherMail server to send you. 4. GopherMail responds to your response by sending the information that you requested. If what you have requested is another menu, GopherMail sends you the menu in the body of another e-mail letter, and the cycle keeps repeating itself :) GopherMail sites are incredibly dynamic -- they appear and disappear every second -- so any list of GopherMail sites is immediately outdated. Nonetheless, here are the addresses of a few of the GopherMail servers that were working recently (1): E-mail Address Location ----------------------------------- --------------- gophermail@calvin.edu Michigan (US) gopher@ucmp1.berkeley.edu California (US) gophermail@mercury.forestry.umn.edu Minnesota (US) gopher@pip.shsu.edu Texas (US) gophermail@eunet.cz Czech Republic gopher@earn.net France gopher@ftp.technion.ac.il Israel gopher@solaris.ims.ac.jp Japan gopher@nig.ac.jp Japan gopher@nips.ac.jp Japan gopher@join.ad.jp Japan gomail@ncc.go.jp Japan gopher@dsv.su.se Sweden Let's try one of these addresses and see what happens! To keep Net traffic to a minimum, you should always use the server that is closest to you. Since Texas is closer to Alabama than any of the other locations, I am going to use the gopher@pip.shsu.edu address. I send an e-mail letter to gopher@pip.shsu.edu and leave the subject line and body blank (remember, it does not matter what I put in body or the subject line, so why waste the effort?). It may take the GopherMail server several hours to respond to my letter -- just like every other Internet server, GopherMail is almost always incredibly overburdened -- but eventually I will receive the following e-mail letter from the GopherMail server: Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 02:59:04 -0600 From: gopher@pip.shsu.edu To: PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU Subject: Sam Houston State University Gopher Server X-Menu: Max. 100 items/message Mail this file back to gopher with an X before the menu items that you want. If you don't mark any items, gopher will send all of them. For best results, remove this message and all e-mail headers above it prior to returning it to the GopherMail server. 1. Sam Houston State University Information/ 2. Current Time and Weather in Huntsville, Texas, USA. 3. Daily Almanac (from UChicago). 4. Economics (SHSU Network Access Initiative Project)/ 5. Information by Subject Area/ 6. DEU Library Prototype Demonstration Area/ 7. Network-based Information and References/ 8. Other Gopher and Information Servers in the World/ 9. TeX-related Materials/ 10. Literate Programming Library/ 11. VMS Gopher-related file library/ 12. Veronica (search menu items in most of GopherSpace)/ 13. Professional Sports Schedules from culine.Colorado.edu/ 14. anonymous ftp archives on Niord.SHSU.edu/ 15. anonymous ftp archives on ftp.shsu.edu/ 16. 17. GopherMail -- Gopher via Electronic Mail!!. COOLNESS!! This is a *real* Gopher menu. Just like the UNIX Gopher server examples we looked at earlier this week, entries that have "/" at the end of them are menus, and entries that have a "." at the end of them are documents. The only difference between this Gopher menu and one that I access through a Gopher client or through Telnet is that I have to send my responses back to the GopherMail server before my responses can be processed. Notice that the letter tells me to "remove this message and all e-mail headers above it prior to returning it to the GopherMail server." If I don't do this, I run the chance of getting an error message from the GopherMail server when I forward the letter back to the server. (In MAP04: E-MAIL, I asked you to contact your local Internet service provider to learn how to "include text in a reply (and how to edit this text)." You *NEED* to know how to do this if you want to use GopherMail). Before I send the letter back to the GopherMail server, I need to mark which menu item(s) I want to select. To do this, I put an "X" next to the menu item(s) that I want the GopherMail server to send back to me: 1. Sam Houston State University Information/ 2. Current Time and Weather in Huntsville, Texas, USA. 3. Daily Almanac (from UChicago). 4. Economics (SHSU Network Access Initiative Project)/ 5. Information by Subject Area/ 6. DEU Library Prototype Demonstration Area/ 7. Network-based Information and References/ X 8. Other Gopher and Information Servers in the World/ 9. TeX-related Materials/ 10. Literate Programming Library/ 11. VMS Gopher-related file library/ 12. Veronica (search menu items in most of GopherSpace)/ 13. Professional Sports Schedules from culine.Colorado.edu/ 14. anonymous ftp archives on Niord.SHSU.edu/ 15. anonymous ftp archives on ftp.shsu.edu/ 16. 17. GopherMail -- Gopher via Electronic Mail!!. Hopefully, this will send me a menu that looks like the "Other Gopher Servers" menu that we used earlier this week. I mail the menu back to the GopherMail server. Eventually, I get the following reply: Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 03:18:03 -0600 From: gopher@pip.shsu.edu To: PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU Subject: Other Gopher and Information Servers in the World X-Menu: Max. 100 items/message Mail this file back to gopher with an X before the menu items that you want. If you don't mark any items, gopher will send all of them. For best results, remove this message and all e-mail headers above it to returning it to the GopherMail server. 1. All the Gopher Servers in the World/ 2. Search All the Gopher Servers in the World (Send keywords in Subject:) 3. Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica/ 4. Africa/ 5. Asia/ 6. Europe/ 7. International Organizations/ 8. Middle East/ 9. North America/ 10. Pacific/ 11. Russia/ 12. South America/ 13. Terminal Based Information/ 14. Texas-based Gopher Servers/ 15. VMS-based Gopher Servers/ 16. WAIS Based Information/ 17. Gopher Server Registration. YIPPEE!! This menu *IS* like the menu that we used earlier this week!! SURAnet, here I come ... Nah ... I wouldn't do that to you again :) One last thing, and I will send you home for the weekend: to do a Veronica or a Phonebook search using GopherMail, put the keyword in the subject line of the letter that you send back to the GopherMail server. HOMEWORK: - Have a great weekend! - I've decided to be kind and move the pop quiz to next week. You may want to review FTP and Gopher just to be on the safe side, though. - If you do NOT have regular Gopher access through a client or through Telnet, play around with GopherMail. You may want to get the help document too by putting the word "help" in the body of your initial letter to the GopherMail server. SOURCES: (1) from Yanoff's List (10/15/94), Veronica searches with the keyword "GopherMail", and letters posted to NETTRAIN by Glee Willis and Thomas Copley PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS LETTER DO NOT PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA - TUSCALOOSA ROADMAP: COPYRIGHT PATRICK CRISPEN 1994. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.