A Description of Gopher, Veronica, and Jughead. What is FTP?

A Description of Gopher, Jughead, and Veronica; What is FTP?

by Brad Ryder, June 14, 1996

Gopher. Gopher is a menu-driven Internet client. It allows the user to find information by clicking on a selection of choices. These choices may be links to other servers, or directories, or files. The files can be text or graphics, or even music files. It was thought, when first developed at the University of Minnesota in 1991, that gopher would be the most popular Internet client. It was eventually, and summarily, displaced among casual Internet users by the Web. However, it is still a valuable Internet tool with much useful and important information [Hahn, 1996].

While the Web's appeal is its graphics, gopher's potential was in its powerful search tool called veronica. Although numerous selections might show up in a gopher menu, users can search a database of information on other servers. After doing a search, the gopher resources contain an excerpt of all menu selections in one text block, with search terms highlighted. A user could then browse the excerpt. The "terse mode" option defeats the excerpt field [Courtois, et al., 1995].

Even though the Web is fun and exciting, gopher remains a valuable resource for librarians, information professionals, students and faculty, etc. The ease of access to information is the key. Also, users have found that a gopher client is reasonably priced or, in many cases, free. There are freeware/shareware clients on the Internet, some stored at the University of Minnesota's site, and can be downloaded by ftping to boombox.micro.umn.edu [Lonardo, et al., 1995].

Veronica. If a user wants to search gopher servers, a tool called veronica is available. Software developers, with their quirky sense of humor, named it this as a nod to the ftp search engine archie (which sounds like archive). Since Archie's comic book girlfriend is Veronica, this seemed a logical choice. Veronica didn't stand for anything until someone created the meaning: "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Netwide Index to Computerized Archives" [Hahn, 1996].

Veronica is fairly easy to use. Many gopher menus include a selection called Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica. Some important points must be kept in mind, though, for searches can be tricky:

Nobody is in charge of the Internet, so a search may turn up information that is outdated.
Sites might be bypassed if they don't submit their menus to the database.
Gopher sites often move; veronica will then return addresses that are no longer valid.
Many users are searching the databases at any one time. If you have difficulty finding an available veronica, choose a veronica in a time zone where most people are still sleeping. If this fails, try another until one works. Once connected, the information can be well worth the trouble [Zabinski, 1995].

Jughead. Jughead is similar to veronica except it is designed to search only one server at a time instead of all of gopherspace. Jughead gets its name from Archie's comic book friend, Jughead Jones. It was developed by Rhett Jones who later dubbed the program "Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation and Display." To use jughead, look for a gopher selection called Search menu titles using jughead or something similar. Then type in the search terms. The results will be returned as they are with veronica, only faster since the search is more confined [Hahn, 1996].

FTP. One of the most widely used services on the Internet is FTP, or file transfer protocol. There are literally thousands of remote host computers with valuable and interesting files on them. Any Internet user can have them using FTP, or more accurately called anonymous FTP since an account on these remote computers is not needed to access the public information areas. With anonymous FTP a user can find virtually any type of information [Hahn, 1996].

To FTP, a user needs an FTP client. One with a graphical interface will show the directory of the local host (the user's) computer on one side of the screen and the directory of the remote computer on the other. The user simply clicks around at the remote site until he finds the desired file, then copies or downloads it. Downloading is copying a file from the remote computer, while uploading is putting a file from your computer onto the remote computer [Hahn, 1996].

In trying to be all things to all people, browsers are providing some FTP capabilities. But personal experience indicates that for some reason they are slower and the uploading capabilities are rather restricted. Perhaps the developers don't expect most people to be sending files, only receiving them, but this is a dangerous assumption.

FTP and other Internet services can be used with either a direct Internet connection or through a commercial online service (America Online, Compuserve, etc.). These services are continually improving their Internet resources, so access will become easier in the future [Morton, 1995].

REFERENCES

Courtois, M., Baer, W., Stark. M. (1995.) Cool tools for searching the Web. Online, 19, 6, pp. 14-32. Hahn, H. [1996]. The Internet, Complete Reference, Second Edition. Berkeley, Calif.: Osborne McGraw-Hill.

Lonardo, A., Lonardo, M., McDonald, B. (1995.) Navigating the Internet: Evaluating gopher clients for Windows. Computer in Libraries, 15, 6, pp. 55-62.

Morton, J. (1995.) How to get there. American Demographics, 17, 3, p. 54.

Zabinski, T. (1995.) Surfing with Veronica. Electronic Learning, 15, 3, p. 17.

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