Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 17:12:17 PST Reply-To: Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain From: cocot@osc.versant.com (Captain COCOT) To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal) Subject: [surfpunk-0017] GOPHER: Veronica: new gopher ferretting agents... Keywords: surfpunk, gopher, veronica, indexing, browsing, searching Veronica indexes gopher page titles. I didn't find this incredibly useful for browsing -- it's slow, and it doesn't really tell you what's out there. It's more useful if you know what you're after, but it has to appear in a title. I think this model works well for archie, where you are searching for things by pretty fixed names, but I'm having some qualms about why this isn't satisfying to me. If it were fast, maybe I'd like it better. See what you think. Captain Cocot ways to gopher: gopher telnet consultant.micro.umn.edu or telnet 134.84.132.4 telnet panda.uiowa.edu or telnet 128.255.63.234 telnet gdunix.gd.chalmers.se or 129.16.221.40 (SWEDISH) telnet gopher.uiuc.edu or telnet 128.174.33.160 telnet gopher.unt.edu or telnet 129.120.1.42 telnet tolten.puc.cl or telnet 146.155.1.16 (CHILE) telnet wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu (Login: wsuinfo) telnet una.hh.lib.umich.edu or 141.211.190.102 telnet gopher.ora.com or telnet 140.186.65.25 to veronica: gopher futique.scs.unr.edu 70 ... or navigate to University of Nevada ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ From: keith@cc.gatech.edu (Keith Edwards) Subject: new gopher ferretting agents... From: unr!barrie@uunet.UU.NET (Fred F Barrie) Subject: VERONICA (Archie for GopherSpace) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 01:39:59 GMT This is a new service that should help to relieve the resource-discovery bottleneck in the rapidly-expanding gopher web. It adds global indexing (by title keywords) to gopher's distributed information model. Introductory announcement follows: ........................................................................... About the Veronica service VERONICA: Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives. Veronica offers a keyword search of most gopher-server menus in the entire gopher web. As Archie is to ftp archives, Veronica is to gopherspace. Unlike Archie, the search results can connect you directly to the data source. Imagine an Archie search that lets you select the data, not just the host sites, directly from a menu. Because Veronica is accessed through a gopher client, it is easy to use, and gives access to all types of data supported by the gopher protocol. Veronica was designed as a response to the problem of resource discovery in the rapidly-expanding gopher web. Frustrated comments in the net news-groups have recently reflected the need for such a service. Additional motivation came from the comments of naive gopher users, several of whom assumed that a simple-to-use service would provide a means to find resources "without having to know where they are." The result of a Veronica search is an automatically-generated gopher menu, customized according to the user's keyword specification. Items on this menu may be drawn from many gopher servers. These are functional gopher items, immediately accessible via the gopher client ... just double-click to open directories, read files, or perform other searches -- across hundreds of gopher servers. You need never know which server is actually involved in filling your request for information. Items that are appear particularly interesting can be saved in the user's bookmark list. Notice that these are NOT full-text searches of data at gopher-server sites, just as Archie does not index the contents of ftp sites, but only the names of files at those sites. Veronica indexes the TITLES on all levels of the menus, for most gopher sites in the Internet. 258 gophers are indexed by Veronica on Nov. 17, 1992; we have discovered over 500 servers and will index the full set in the near future. We hope that Veronica will encourage gopher administrators to use very descriptive titles on their menus. To try Veronica, select it from the "Other Gophers" menu on Minnesota's gopher server, or point your gopher at: Name=Veronica (search menu items in most of GopherSpace) Type=1 Port=70 Path=1/Veronica Host=futique.scs.unr.edu Veronica is an experimental service, developed by Steve Foster and Fred Barrie at University of Nevada. As we expect that the load will soon outgrow our hardware, we will distribute the Veronica service across other sites in the near future. Please address comments to: gophadm@futique.scs.unr.edu November 17, 1992 Steve Foster ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern California matrix. Quantum Californians appear in one of two states, spin surf or spin punk. 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