The Gopher protocol () is a

communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniza ...

designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...

networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

in its early stages, but ultimately fell into disfavor, yielding to

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

. The Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web.

Usage

The Gopher protocol was invented by a team led by Mark P. McCahill at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. It offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on the documents it stores. Its text menu interface is well-suited to computing environments that rely heavily on remote text-oriented computer terminals, which were still common at the time of its creation in 1991, and the simplicity of its protocol facilitated a wide variety of client implementations. More recent Gopher revisions and graphical clients added support for multimedia. File:Gopher in Firefox 1.5.png, Firefox 1.5 (2005) Gopher's hierarchical structure provided a platform for the first large-scale electronic library connections. The Gopher protocol is still in use by enthusiasts, and although it has been almost entirely supplanted by the Web, a small population of actively-maintained servers remains.

Origins

Gopher system was released in mid-1991 by Mark P. McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, and Bob Alberti of the

in the United States. Its central goals were, as stated in : * A file-like hierarchical arrangement that would be familiar to users. * A simple syntax. * A system that can be created quickly and inexpensively. * Extensibility of the file system metaphor; allowing addition of searches for example. Gopher combines document hierarchies with collections of services, including WAIS, the Archie and Veronica

search engines A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

, and gateways to other information systems such as

File Transfer Protocol The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

(FTP) and

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

. The general interest in campus-wide information systems (CWISs) in higher education at the time, and the ease of setup of Gopher servers to create an instant CWIS with links to other sites' online directories and resources, were the factors contributing to Gopher's rapid adoption. The name was coined by Anklesaria as a play on several meanings of the word "gopher". McCahill credits Anklesaria with naming Gopher The

mascot is the gopher, a

gofer A gofer, go-fer or gopher is an employee who specializes in the delivery of special items to their superior(s). Examples of these special items include a cup of coffee, a tool, a tailored suit, or a car. Outside of the business world, the term ...

is an assistant who "goes for" things, and a

gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...

burrows through the ground to reach a desired location.

Decline

The

was in its infancy in 1991, and Gopher services quickly became established. By the late 1990s, Gopher had ceased expanding. Several factors contributed to Gopher's stagnation: * In February 1993, the

announced that it would charge licensing fees for the use of its implementation of the Gopher server. Users became concerned that fees might also be charged for independent implementations. Gopher expansion stagnated, to the advantage of the World Wide Web, to which CERN disclaimed ownership. In September 2000, the University of Minnesota re-licensed its Gopher software under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

. * Gopher client functionality was quickly duplicated by the early

Mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

web browser, which subsumed its protocol. * Gopher has a more rigid structure than the free-form

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

of the Web. Every Gopher document has a defined format and type, and the typical user navigates through a single server-defined menu system to get to a particular document. This can be quite different from the way a user finds documents on the Web. * Failure to follow the open systems model, bad publicity Gopher remains in active use by its enthusiasts, and there have been attempts to revive Gopher on modern platforms and mobile devices. One attempt is The Overbite Project, which hosts various browser extensions and modern clients.

Server census

*, there remained about 160 gopher servers indexed by Veronica-2, reflecting a slow growth from 2007 when there were fewer than 100. They are typically infrequently updated. On these servers Veronica indexed approximately 2.5 million unique selectors. A handful of new servers were being set up every year by hobbyists with over 50 having been set up and added to Floodgap's list since 1999. A snapshot of Gopherspace in 2007 circulated on BitTorrent and was still available in 2010. Due to the simplicity of the Gopher protocol, setting up new servers or adding Gopher support to browsers is often done in a

tongue-in-cheek The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a serious manner. History The phrase originally expressed contempt, but by 1842 had acquired its modern meaning. Early users of the phrase include Sir Walter Scot ...

manner, principally on

April Fools' Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...

. *In November 2014 Veronica indexed 144 gopher servers, reflecting a small drop from 2012, but within these servers Veronica indexed approximately 3 million unique selectors. *In March 2016 Veronica indexed 135 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 4 million unique selectors. *In March 2017 Veronica indexed 133 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 4.9 million unique selectors. *In May 2018 Veronica indexed 260 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 3.7 million unique selectors. *In May 2019 Veronica indexed 320 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 4.2 million unique selectors. *In January 2020 Veronica indexed 395 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 4.5 million unique selectors. *In February 2021 Veronica indexed 361 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 6 million unique selectors. *In February 2022 Veronica indexed 325 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 5 million unique selectors.

Technical details

The conceptualization of knowledge in "Gopher space" or a "cloud" as specific information in a particular file, and the prominence of the FTP, influenced the technology and the resulting functionality of Gopher.

Gopher characteristics

Gopher is designed to function and to appear much like a mountable read-only global

network file system Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, lik ...

(and software, such as opher://gopher.r-36.net/1/scm/gopherfs gopherfs is available that can actually mount a Gopher server as a

FUSE Fuse or FUSE may refer to: Devices * Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current ** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles * Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protect ...

resource). At a minimum, whatever can be done with data files on a CD-ROM, can be done on Gopher. A Gopher system consists of a series of hierarchical hyperlinkable menus. The choice of menu items and titles is controlled by the administrator of the server. Similar to a file on a Web server, a file on a Gopher server can be linked to as a menu item from any other Gopher server. Many servers take advantage of this inter-server linking to provide a directory of other servers that the user can access.

Protocol

The Gopher protocol was first described in . IANA has assigned TCP

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

70 to the Gopher protocol. The protocol is simple to negotiate, making it possible to browse without using a client.

User request

First, the client establishes a TCP connection with the server on port 70, the standard gopher port. The client then sends a string followed by a carriage return followed by a

line feed Newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a ...

(a "CR + LF" sequence). This is the selector, which identifies the document to be retrieved. If the item selector were an empty line, the default directory would be selected.

Server response

The server then replies with the requested item and closes the connection. According to the protocol, before the connection is closed, the server should send a full-stop (i.e., a period character) on a line by itself. However, not all servers conform to this part of the protocol and the server may close the connection without returning the final full-stop. The main type of reply from the server is a text or binary resource. Alternatively, the resource can be a menu: a form of structured text resource providing references to other resources. Because of the simplicity of the Gopher protocol, tools such as

netcat netcat (often abbreviated to nc) is a computer networking utility for reading from and writing to network connections using TCP or UDP. The command is designed to be a dependable back-end that can be used directly or easily driven by other p ...

make it possible to download Gopher content easily from the command line: echo jacks/jack.exe , nc gopher.example.org 70 > jack.exe The protocol is also supported by cURL as of 7.21.2-DEV.

Search request

The selector string in the request can optionally be followed by a tab character and a search string. This is used by item type 7.

Source code of a menu

Gopher menu items are defined by lines of

tab-separated values A tab-separated values (TSV) file is a simple text format for storing data in a tabular structure, e.g., a database table or spreadsheet data, and a way of exchanging information between databases. Each record in the table is one line of the text ...

in a

text file A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flatfile) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operat ...

. This file is sometimes called a ''gophermap''. As the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

to a gopher menu, a gophermap is roughly analogous to an

file for a web page. Each tab-separated line (called a ''selector line'') gives the

client software In computing, a client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks. The server is often (but not always) on another computer system, i ...

a description of the menu item: what it is, what it's called, and where it leads. The client displays the menu items in the order that they appear in the gophermap. The first character in a selector line indicates the ''item type'', which tells the client what kind of file or protocol the menu item points to. This helps the client decide what to do with it. Gopher's item types are a more basic precursor to the media type system used by the Web and

email attachment An email attachment is a computer file sent along with an email message. One or more files can be attached to any email message, and be sent along with it to the recipient. This is typically used as a simple method to share documents and images. ...

s. The item type is followed by the ''user display string'' (a description or label that represents the item in the menu); the selector (a

path A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail. Path or PATH may also refer to: Physical paths of different types * Bicycle path * Bridle path, used by people on horseback * Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle * Desire p ...

or other string for the resource on the server); the ''hostname'' (the

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

of the server), and the

network port In computer networking, a port is a number assigned to uniquely identify a connection endpoint and to direct data to a specific service. At the software level, within an operating system, a port is a logical construct that identifies a specific ...

. All lines in a gopher menu are terminated by "CR + LF". For example: The following selector line generates a link to the "/home"

directory Directory may refer to: * Directory (computing), or folder, a file system structure in which to store computer files * Directory (OpenVMS command) * Directory service, a software application for organizing information about a computer network's u ...

at the subdomain gopher.floodgap.com, on

70. The item type of indicates that the resource is a Gopher menu. The string "Floodgap Home" is what the user sees in the menu. 1Floodgap Home /home gopher.floodgap.com 70

Item types

In a Gopher menu's source code, a one-character code indicates what kind of content the client should expect. This code may either be a digit or a letter of the alphabet; letters are

case-sensitive In computers, case sensitivity defines whether uppercase and lowercase letters are treated as distinct (case-sensitive) or equivalent (case-insensitive). For instance, when users interested in learning about dogs search an e-book, "dog" and "Dog" a ...

. The

technical specification A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...

for Gopher, , defines 14 item types. The later gopher+ specification defined an additional 3 types. A one-character code indicates what kind of content the client should expect. Item type is an

error code In computer programming, a return code or an error code is a numeric or alphanumeric code that is used to determine the nature of an error and why it occurred. They are also commonly found in consumer electronics and devices when they attempt to ...

for

exception handling In computing and computer programming, exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence of ''exceptions'' – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – during the execution of a program. In general, an ...

. Gopher client authors improvised item types (HTML), (informational message), and (

sound file An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. The bit layout of the audio data (excluding metadata) is called the audio coding format and can be uncompressed, or audio compression (data), compressed to r ...

) after the publication of RFC 1436. Browsers like Netscape Navigator and early versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer would prepend the item type code to the selector as described in , so that the type of the gopher item could be determined by the url itself. Most gopher browsers still available, use these prefixes in their urls. Here is an example gopher session where the user requires a gopher menu ( on the first line):

/Reference
1CIA World Factbook     /Archives/mirrors/textfiles.com/politics/CIA    gopher.quux.org 70
0Jargon 4.2.0   /Reference/Jargon 4.2.0 gopher.quux.org 70      +
1Online Libraries       /Reference/Online Libraries     gopher.quux.org 70     +
1RFCs: Internet Standards       /Computers/Standards and Specs/RFC      gopher.quux.org 70
1U.S. Gazetteer /Reference/U.S. Gazetteer       gopher.quux.org 70      +
iThis file contains information on United States        fake    (NULL)  0
icities, counties, and geographical areas.  It has      fake    (NULL)  0
ilatitude/longitude, population, land and water area,   fake    (NULL)  0
iand ZIP codes. fake    (NULL)  0
i       fake    (NULL)  0
iTo search for a city, enter the city's name.  To search        fake    (NULL) 0
ifor a county, use the name plus County -- for instance,        fake    (NULL) 0
iDallas County. fake    (NULL)  0

The gopher menu sent back from the server, is a sequence of lines each of which describes an item that can be retrieved. Most clients will display these as hypertext links, and so allow the user to navigate through gopherspace by following the links. This menu includes a text resource (itemtype on the third line), multiple links to submenus (itemtype , on the second line as well as lines 4-6) and a non-standard information message (from line 7 on), broken down to multiple lines by providing dummy values for selector, host and port.

External links

Historically, to create a link to a Web server, "GET /" was used as a pseudo-selector to emulate an

GET request. John Goerzen created an addition to the Gopher protocol, commonly referred to as " URL links", that allows links to any protocol that supports URLs. For example, to create a link to http://gopher.quux.org/, the item type is , the display string is the title of the link, the item selector is "URL:http://gopher.quux.org/", and the domain and port are that of the originating Gopher server (so that clients that do not support URL links will query the server and receive an HTML redirection page).

Gopher+

Gopher+ is a forward compatible enhancement to the Gopher protocol. Gopher+ works by sending metadata between the client and the server. The enhancement was never widely adopted by Gopher servers. The client sends a tab followed by a +. A Gopher+ server will respond with a status line followed by the content the client requested. An item is marked as supporting Gopher+ in the Gopher directory listing by a tab + after the port (this is the case of some of the items in the example above). Other features of Gopher+ include: * Item attributes, which can include the items ** Administrator ** Last date of modification ** Different views of the file, like PostScript or plain text, or different languages ** Abstract, or description of the item * Interactive queries

Client software

Gopher clients

These are clients, libraries, and utilities primarily designed to access gopher resources.

Other clients

Clients like web browsers, libraries, and utilities primarily designed to access world wide web resources, but which maintain(ed) gopher support. * Browse, a browser for

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archi ...

* Camino, versions 1.0 to 2.1.2, always uses port 70. *

Classilla Classilla is a Gecko-based Internet suite for PowerPC-based classic Macintosh operating systems, essentially an updated descendant of the defunct Mozilla Application Suite by way of the Mac OS port maintained in the aborteWaMComproject. The na ...

, versions 9.0 to 9.3.4b1 as of March 2021, hardcoded to port 70 from 9.0 to 9.2; whitelisted ports from 9.2.1 *

Dooble Dooble is a free and open-source web browser that was created to improve privacy. Currently, Dooble is available for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, OS/2, and Windows. Dooble uses Qt for its user interface and abstraction from the operating system ...

ELinks ELinks is a free text-based web browser for Unix-like operating systems. It began in late 2001 as an experimental fork by Petr Baudiš of the Links Web browser, hence the E in the name. Since then, the E has come to stand for Enhanced or Ex ...

, versions 0.10.0 to 0.12pre6 as of October 2012, unmaintained browser with gopher build option. Fork ''felinks'' offers support as a build option * Edbrowse, a line-oriented editor and browser with an interface like that of

ed (text editor) (pronounced as distinct letters, ) is a line editor for Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It was one of the first parts of the Unix operating system that was developed, in August 1969. It remains part of the POSIX and Open Group standards ...

Falkon Falkon (formerly QupZilla) is a free and open-source web browser developed by KDE. It is built on the QtWebEngine, which is a wrapper for the Chromium browser core. Both KaOS and openMandriva Lx use Falkon as their default browser. Featu ...

, with plug-in only, requires Falkon ≥ 3.1.0 with both the KDE Frameworks Integration extension (shipped with Falkon ≥ 3.1.0) enabled and the (separate) kio_gopher plug-in ≥ 0.1.99 (first release for KDE Frameworks 5) installed * Mozilla Firefox versions 0.1 to 3.6, built-in support dropped from Firefox 4.0 onwards; can be added back by installing one of the extensions by the Overbite Project *

Galeon Galeon is a discontinued Gecko-based web browser that was created by Marco Pesenti Gritti with the goal of delivering a consistent browsing experience to GNOME desktop environment. It gained some popularity in the early 2000s due to its speed, ...

version 2.0.7 * Google Chrome, with extension only, Burrow extension *

Internet Explorer for Mac Internet Explorer for Mac (also referred to as Internet Explorer for Macintosh, Internet Explorer Macintosh Edition, Internet Explorer:mac or IE:mac) was a proprietary web browser developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh platform to browse web pag ...

version 5.2.3, PowerPC-only *

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

, dropped with version 6: Support removed by MS02-047 from IE 6 SP1 can be re-enabled in the

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and ...

. Always uses port 70. Gopher support was disabled in

versions 5.x and 6 for Windows in August 2002 by a patch meant to fix a security vulnerability in the browser's Gopher protocol handler to reduce the attack surface which was included in IE6 SP1; however, it can be re-enabled by editing the

Windows registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and ...

. In

Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006, as the seventh version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is pa ...

, Gopher support was removed on the WinINET level. *

K-Meleon K-Meleon is a free and open-source, lightweight web browser for Microsoft Windows. Unlike cross-platform browsers, it uses the native Windows API to create its user interface. K-Meleon can use the secure Goanna layout engine based on Mozilla's ...

, dropped support *

Konqueror Konqueror is a free and open-source web browser and file manager that provides web access and file-viewer functionality for file systems (such as local files, files on a remote FTP server and files in a disk image). It forms a core part of t ...

, with plug-in only, requires kio_gopher plug-in * Line Mode Browser, since version 1.1, January 1992 * Lynx *

, version 3.0 * NetSurf, under development, based on the cURL fetcher *

Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator was a web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in ...

, version 9.0.0.6 *

OmniWeb OmniWeb is a discontinued web browser that was developed and marketed by The Omni Group exclusively for Apple's macOS operating system. Though a stable version is no longer maintained, it is still available as a free download and unstable version ...

, since version 5.9.2 , first

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the P ...

Browser to support Gopher *

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

, Opera 9.0 included a proxy capability * Pavuk, a web mirror (recursive download) software program *

SeaMonkey SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape ...

, version 1.0 to 2.0.14, built-in support dropped from SeaMonkey 2.1 onwards; could be added back to some versions with the Overbite project, but is no longer supported. *

Epiphany Epiphany may refer to: * Epiphany (feeling), an experience of sudden and striking insight Religion * Epiphany (holiday), a Christian holiday celebrating the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ ** Epiphany season, or Epiph ...

, until version 2.26.3, disabled with switch to

* WebPositive, a

-based browser used in the

Haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or s ...

operating system *

libwww Libwww was an early World Wide Web software library providing core functions for browsers, implementing HTML, HTTP, and other technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN, released libwww (then also called the "Common Library") in late 1992, comprising ...

, versions 1.0c to 5.4.1 , libwww is an discontinued

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

for internet applications. A modern fork is maintained in Lynx Browsers that do not natively support Gopher can still access servers using one of the available Gopher to

gateways or

proxy server In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. Instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a reques ...

that converts Gopher menus into

; known proxies are the Floodgap Public Gopher proxy and Gopher Proxy. Similarly, certain server packages such as GN and PyGopherd have built-in Gopher to

interfaces. Squid Proxy software gateways any gopher:// URL to HTTP content, enabling any browser or web agent to access gopher content easily. For Mozilla Firefox and

, Overbite extensions extend Gopher browsing and support the current versions of the browsers (Firefox Quantum v ≥57 and equivalent versions of SeaMonkey): * OverbiteWX redirects gopher:// URLs to a proxy; * OverbiteNX adds native-like support; * for Firefox up to 56.*, and equivalent versions of SeaMonkey, OverbiteFF adds native-like support, but it is no longer maintained OverbiteWX includes support for accessing Gopher servers not on port 70 using a whitelist and for CSO/ph queries. OverbiteFF always uses port 70. For Chromium and Google Chrome, Burrow is available. It redirects gopher:// URLs to a proxy. In the past an Overbite proxy-based extension for these browsers was available but is no longer maintained and does not work with the current (>23) releases. For

, Kio gopher is available. The bandwidth-sparing simple interface of Gopher can be a good match for mobile phones and

personal digital assistants A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in partic ...

(PDAs), The early 2010s saw a renewed interest in native Gopher clients for popular smartphones. Gopher popularity was at its height at a time when there were still many equally competing computer architectures and operating systems. As a result, there are several Gopher clients available for Acorn RISC OS,

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

, Atari MiNT,

CMS CMS may refer to: Computing * Call management system * CMS-2 (programming language), used by the United States Navy * Code Morphing Software, a technology used by Transmeta * Collection management system for a museum collection * Color manag ...

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

, classic Mac OS,

MVS Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers. IBM developed MVS, along with OS/VS1 and SVS, as a successor to OS/360. It is unrelated ...

NeXT Next may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

OS/2 Warp OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 re ...

, most

UNIX-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating systems, VMS,

Windows 3.x Windows 3.x means either of, or all of the following versions of Microsoft Windows: * Windows 3.0 * Windows 3.1x Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windo ...

, and

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced from 1995 to 2000, which were based on the Windows 95 kernel and its underlying foundation of MS-DOS, both of which were updated in su ...

GopherVR GopherVR is an enhanced Internet Gopher client that includes a 3D visualization tool for viewing resource collections as 3D scenes. It explored how people outside of formal research laboratories could use spatial metaphors to access information. Th ...

was a client designed for 3D visualization, and there is even a Gopher client in

MOO A MOO ("MUD, object-oriented") is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users (players) are connected at the same time. The term MOO is used in two distinct, but related, senses. One is to refer to those programs descend ...

. The majority of these clients are

hard-coded Hard coding (also hard-coding or hardcoding) is the software development practice of embedding data directly into the source code of a program or other executable object, as opposed to obtaining the data from external sources or generating it at ...

to work on TCP

70.

Server software

Because the protocol is trivial to implement in a basic fashion, there are many server packages still available, and some are still maintained.

References

External links

* opher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/world List of public Gopher servers(Gopher link)
proxied link

An announcement of Gopher on the Usenet 8 October 1991

nbsp;— a position statement on Gopher's survival
The Web may have won, but Gopher tunnels on
nbsp;— an article published by the technology discussion site ''Ars Technica'' about the Gopher community of enthusiasts as of 5 November 2009
History of Gopher
nbsp;— Article in MinnPost * opher://gopherpedia.com/1 Gopherpedianbsp;— Gopher interface for Wikipedia (Gopher link)
proxied linkby another proxy
* Mark McCahill and Farhad Anklesaria – gopher inventors – explain the evolution of gopher
part 1part 2
* opher://gopher.floodgap.com/0/gopher/tech/gopherplus.txt Proposed Gopher+ Specification(gopher link) {{DEFAULTSORT:Gopher (Protocol) History of the Internet Internet Standards University of Minnesota software URI schemes

Usage

Origins

Decline

Server census

Technical details

Gopher characteristics

Protocol

User request

Server response

Search request

Source code of a menu

Item types

External links

Gopher+

Client software

Gopher clients

Other clients

Server software

See also

References

External links