Gopher Conference, Pt. I

Wed Apr 21 12:14:21 CDT 1993

From: "Tim Kambitsch, Butler University Libraries" <KAMBITSCH at BUTLERU.BITNET>
Subject: Trip notes from Internet Gopher 93 Conference (Part I)
Internet Gopher Conference 93 -- April 13, 1993 -- University of Minnesota

The following notes are a compise of notes taken by myself and several others
who attended the conference.  I'll take credit in advance for any errors and
omissions.  Many thanks to the following individuals for their contributions:

Carl E. Snow, (Carl at Smart.Lib.Purdue.Edu)
Kirk Keller (ENGKIRKK at MIZZOU1.missouri.edu)
Ian Lumb    (ian at unicaat.yorku.ca)

Tim Kambitsch                           317-283-9949 (voice)
Butler University Libraries             317-283-9711 (fax)
4600 Sunset Avenue                      kambitsch at butler.edu
Indianapolis IN 46208                   kambitsch at butleru.bitnet

                             GENERAL SESSIONS

More than 250 people attended the second Gopher conference.  Among the
attendees were representatives from the Chronicle of Higher Education,
Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, New York Times, CNIDR, NOTIS,
NASA-Goddard, Xerox-PARC, The World Bank, and a multitude of universities
from around the world.

In the morning sessions the Gopher Development Team gave attendees an update
to the latest on Gopher.  Mark McCahill, project leader for Gopher development
at the University of Minnesota, gave a very brief history of Gopher and the
design objectives directing their development program.

In addition to keeping Gopher simple and easy to use, the development team has
strives to keep the gopher protocol simple.  Another design objective is to
offer client and server programs to the widest range of platforms; including
the original PCs.

Use of Gopher Protocols on the Internet has grown dramatically.  Gopher has
arisen from 199th to 14th (and 9th for last month.) among the most active
applications on the Internet.

The existing Gopher protocol is becoming an ITEF standard.  While work is
progressing on standardizing the Gopher protocol, work is also advancing on
an extended protocol dubbed Gopher +. These extensions will enable
Attributes for alternate views; ASK blocks; and Authentication.

Some of the attributes in the Gopher+ extensions include meta-information such
as modification dates, administrator and abstract information for specific
items.  Alternate access methods for documents will enable clients to extract
files in the formats of choice (for instance a textual document might be
retrieved as plain text, RTF, or one of the popular word processing formats.)

ASK blocks enable creation of on-line forms (you could order the nifty Gopher
Conference T-shirt via an ASK block.)  Another application of ASK blocks might
be the construction of sophisticated structured database queries.  In a library
setting forms could be devised for reserves, ILL, media reservations,
electronic reference, and even an electronic suggestion box.

Admit One is a Gopher+ authentication scheme which distribute single use
tickets for accessing restricted databases.  The Gopher Team stressed that
they did not want to replace existing authentication systems, and Admit One is
a example of incorporating authentication into Gopher.

The Gopher+ protocols are still being defined.

Looking further in the future, the Gopher Team wishes to incorporate feedback
mechanisms, such as ranking of results; conferencing capabilities;  and some
lightweight directory services (Whois ++).  Some mention was made of Z39.50
1992  as being on the plate for future implementation but there seemed to be
some hesitation in its implementation.  This is probably since Z39.50 is
undergoing a major review and revision.

Dave Johnson gave an overview of TurboGopher (Macintosh client.)  His focus of
recently has been on the user interface, speed and Gopher+ extensions.  He
showed some slides with Japanese and Chinese characters.  TurboGopher can
support single or multiple window operation and access to redundant Gopher
servers.  To make TurboGopher the fastest Gopher Client, he has incorporated
caching of recent screens and displaying initial screens of a long text item
as the remainder is being received.  Gopher+ extension support includes item
attributes, alternate views and Admit One authentication.

TurboGopher allows users to custom configure helper applications. Helper
application are program that can be launched within TurboGopher to view items.
NCSA Telnet is a good example for launching terminal sessions, but other
typical uses of helper applications, include specifying Microsoft Word or
MacWrite as the default application for viewing text files or using Giffer for
viewing GIFF files.  A mini-status window displays transfer progress and when
the file is received, an open button becomes active to allow users to launch
the helper application.

In future incarnations of TurboGopher are language preferences and dynamic
refreshing of document/directory listings.

Daniel Torrey, the chief programmer for PC DOS Gopher first reviewed all the
limitations of the original program.  Torrey reported that
the PC client uses the same TCP/IP stacks as PC POP mail, and the Clarkson
driver interface.  The PC client is written in Turbo Pascal 6.0 and
Turbovision.  Because of the many problems with PC Gopher II the client
was entirely rewritten as PC Gopher III.  PC Gopher III still adheres to
the 640K memory partition.  There were other changes that permit multiple
search threads (2 instead of 1).  Gopher III now supports binary file
transfers.

>Side bar: Kirk Keller (ENGKIRKK at MIZZOU1.missouri.edu) who contributed
>notes from the "Cooking your own Gopher+" session and noted:

>The dos PC server does not support the Gopher+ extensions.  Whether anyone
>outside will develop a PC server or whether Minn. will develop the windows
>version of a server (with Gopher+) remains to be seen.

>I'm trying to idiot-proof a utility for use on the server which will
>allow DOS users to more easily input info. to their server.  I imagine I
>won't have the thing done for another 4 months, but if folks have an interest,
>I might speed up.

In the future the DOS gopher program will support additional drivers, larger
display files, Gopher + extensions, helper applications and will sport an
internal VT100 and 3270 terminal emulator.

Bob Alberti gave an overview of the FTP/Gopher gateway project.  With such a
gateway in place, FTP sites can be queried with Gopher.  Some of the
challenges he has faced is getting some of the unique FTP server software
products to respond with appropriate information.  He believes the solution is
port mode.

Paul Lindner covered the current state and future plans for the UNIX server
and client.  The UNIX client is quite stable with the exception of an
improved downloading system that will replace the use of /tmp with improved
memory piping.  The change will significantly reduce the need for disk storage.
Current client features include VT100 emulation; caching recent
results and bookmarks; and better phone book features. Future clients will
allow preferred views and languages and on-line configuration of helper
applications.

The UNIX server currently supports WAIS queries and supports Gopher+
extensions; easier configuration; mapping of file name extensions and
multi-part documents.  Future features may include usage tracking which will
give server administrators feedback on popular items; chaining of servers for
firewall protection of resources; relational and flat file index interfaces.
The Gopher+ server will have better numbering (controls items display order).
One promised enhancement for the server is a relational database interface.

Several people gave updates to the conference on the Developers Workshop held
the day before the conference.  Break out sessions covered Using Other
Technologies; Security and Authentication; and Creating Front-ends to
Structured Databases

Jane Smith reported that the group discussed how Gopher could interact with
other tools such as WAIS and WWW and how Gopher+ would support URNs (Uniform
Resource Names) and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators).

Billy Barron covered the discussions on Cataloging E-Journals and other
resources.  With the growth in the number and depth of Gopher servers,
accessing the full universe of data on a particular topic has become more
difficult.  Discussion centered on using controlled vocabulary
the need for subject, chronology, and geographic location identifiers to
be imbedded in the document files. Subject-based and Audience-based Gophers
were also discussed (Audience-based servers are more broadly based and would
likely have a lot of additional topics of interest to the audience.)
The used bookstore model was discussed as a means of offering a broadly
categorized collection of resources.

Tamara Iverson presented the Authentication and security report.  This
session was very heated,  many reporting that the Admit One system was
fatally flawed and should not be implemented. Some participants discussing
this issue felt that Gopher should not adopt a single authentication protocol,
but should leave hooks for sites to incorporate whatever mechanism they feel
is necessary.

Paul Lindner covered some of the discussions on integrating Gopher with flat
file and relational databases. Many people have worked with extracts and
report files and gopherized the results.  He was surprised by the number of
people who have done things with dbase.

The team from the University of Nevada gave an update on the benefits and
challenges with using Veronica.  Veronica enables keyword title searches from
within Gopher by systematically harvesting all the entries within all the
servers it knows about.  Veronica searching can
handle and's, or's, and not, but parentheses are not supported.  A
conferee reported that a companion program called Jughead could be used to
do the same for a single campus.

While Veronica can offer a more systematic approach to searching Gopherspace,
the end user cannot perceive any order to matching entries.  Also the entries
listed are often times out of context (i.e. a file just called README doesn't
have any meaning without the other files in the same directory). Other
limitations of Veronica include the number of redundant entries reflecting
redundant items and the limitation to searching only the name of an item.

Some changes in the indexing software were recently implemented that has made
Veronica faster (most searches should be completed within 10 seconds to 1.5
minutes.)  Six more Veronica servers are coming on line, which should help
speed up access.

Some Veronica factoids:
10,000,000 gopher items found during a recent extract from Gopherspace.
1,500,000 items are left when redundant entries were removed.
360MBs is the current size of the Veronica data set.

The future of Veronica will depend on how well Veronica can scale up to
accommodate the growing number of Gopher servers. (Will a design that works
with 1200 servers work if Gopherspace expands to 10,000 servers?)  Another
issue the Veronica team is wrestling with is whether they should extract from
servers without permission.  Currently sites that don't want to be included
can contact the Veronica Team.

Within 2 months, they hope to index abstracts and administrator fields.
Potential future developments include topic and regional databases and e-mail
access.  Other ideas include, time stamps for entries; local veronica servers
and thesaurus.

Farhad Anklesaria gave a review of the Gopher+ Attribute Registry.  The idea
behind the attribute registry is that in order to make more efficient use of
Gopher and the growing list of file types, a central registry is needed to
view and define these attributes. During the developers workshop held the day
before the conference, the gopher team was urged to adopt the MIME (Multi-part
Internet Mail Extensions) as content types.

Cool Tools and Uses

A fun part of the morning session was during the last hour before lunch where
attendees could explain or demonstrate anything unique that they have done
using Gopher, or any helpful tool they have developed.  A stuffed toy gopher
was awarded to the best entry.

Rhett Jones  from the University of Utah presented Jughead, a Veronica for a
single campus.

_________________________________________________________________________

James H. Beach                                      beach at huh.harvard.edu
Data Administrator                                  Tel:   (617) 495-1912
MCZ, Herbaria, Arnold Arboretum                     Fax:   (617) 495-9484
22 Divinity Avenue
Harvard University                                  ICBM:  42 22' 40.0" N
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