<article lang="&language;" id="gopher"> <title >gopher</title> <articleinfo> <authorgroup> <author >&Lauri.Watts; &Lauri.Watts.mail;</author> <othercredit role="translator" ><firstname >Malcolm</firstname ><surname >Hunter</surname ><affiliation ><address ><email >malcolm.hunter@gmx.co.uk</email ></address ></affiliation ><contrib >Conversion to British English</contrib ></othercredit > </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 standardised, 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>