MAP22: Gophermail

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 in the last few lessons 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 :)

     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

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

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!!.

This is a real Gopher menu. Just like the UNIX Gopher server examples we looked at in MAP18: Gopher (Part One), 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!!.

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.

Nah ... I wouldn't do that to you again :)

One last thing, and I will let you go: 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:

1. I've decided to be kind and give the pop quiz after the next two lessons. You may want to review FTP and Gopher just to be on the safe side, though.
   
   
2. 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.

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
   Go back to where this citation is referenced.

   (\__/)  .~    ~. ))
   /O O `./      .'               PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN
  {O__,   \    {                   PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU
    / .  . )    \                THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA
    |-| '-' \    } ))
   .(   _(   )_.'         Roadmap: Copyright 1994 Patrick Crispen.
  '---.~_ _ _&                      All rights reserved.

                          The views expressed in this letter do not
                            necessarily represent the views of the
                             University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa.

Go back to the Syllabus

MAP23: WWW

MAP21: Veronica