<article lang="&language;" id="gopher">
<title>gopher</title>
<articleinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>&Lauri.Watts; &Lauri.Watts.mail;</author>
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</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>
