<article lang="&language;" id="gopher"> <title>gopher</title> <articleinfo> <authorgroup> <author>&Lauri.Watts; &Lauri.Watts.mail;</author> <!-- TRANS:ROLES_OF_TRANSLATORS --> </authorgroup> </articleinfo> <para> <command>gopher</command> began as a distributed campus information service at the University of Minnesota. Gopher allows the user to access information on Gopher servers running on Internet hosts.</para> <para> Gopher is an Internet information browsing service that uses a menu-driven interface. Users select information from menus, which may return another menu or display a text file. An item may reside on a Gopher server you originally queried, or it may be on another Gopher server (or another host). Gopher can <quote>tunnel</quote> from one Gopher to another without the user knowing that the server and/or host machine have changed. Gopher keeps the exact location of computers hidden from the user, providing the <quote>illusion</quote> of a single, large set of interconnected menus. </para> <para> Gopher permits the user to record an item's location in a <quote>bookmark</quote> thereby allowing users to follow a <quote>bookmark</quote> directly to a particular item without searching the menu system. Gopher menus are not standardized, inasmuch as each Gopher server is individually determined. </para> <para> Source: <ulink url="http://tlc.nlm.nih.gov/resources/tutorials/internetdistlrn/gophrdef.htm"> http://tlc.nlm.nih.gov/resources/tutorials/internetdistlrn/gophrdef.htm</ulink> </para> </article>