gophi/docs/GOPHER.md

Features

• Serve DIR/gophermap by default, else falls back to directory listing

• Parsing of any files named gophermap or ending in .gophermap as gophermaps

• Automatic replacement of $hostname or $port in gophermap lines with current host information

• Insert files with automated line reflowing, output of any CGI scripts WITHIN gophermaps

• Support for all commonly accepted item type characters (beyond just RFC1436 support)

• User supplied footer text appended to gophermaps and directory listings

Gophermap Parsing

Due to the way that gophermap parsing is handled, if a gophermap is larger than the max cache'd file size, these gophermaps WILL NOT be parsed by the server. The features you will miss out on for these files are features listed [SERVER ONLY] in the gophermap item types section below.

Supported gophermap item types

All of the following item types are supported by Gophor, separated into grouped standards. Most handling of item types is performed by the clients connecting to Gophor, but when performing directory listings Gophor will attempt to automatically classify files according to the below types.

Item types listed as [SERVER ONLY] means that these are item types recognised ONLY by Gophor and to be used when crafting a gophermap. They provide additional methods of formatting / functionality within a gophermap, and the output of these item types is usually converted to informational text lines before sending to connecting clients.

RFC 1436 Standard:
Type | Treat as | Meaning
--------------------------
 0   |   TEXT   | Regular file (text)
 1   |   MENU   | Directory (menu)
 2   | EXTERNAL | CCSO flat db; other db
 3   |  ERROR   | Error message
 4   |   TEXT   | Macintosh BinHex file
 5   |  BINARY  | Binary archive (zip, rar, 7zip, tar, gzip, etc)
 6   |   TEXT   | UUEncoded archive
 7   |   INDEX  | Query search engine or CGI script
 8   | EXTERNAL | Telnet to: VT100 series server
 9   |  BINARY  | Binary file (see also, 5)
 T   | EXTERNAL | Telnet to: tn3270 series server
 g   |  BINARY  | GIF format image file (just use I)
 I   |  BINARY  | Any format image file
 +   |     -    | Redundant (indicates mirror of previous item)
 .   |     -    | Last line, stop processing gophermap

GopherII Standard:
Type | Treat as | Meaning
--------------------------
 c   |  BINARY  | Calendar file
 d   |  BINARY  | Word-processing document; PDF document
 h   |   TEXT   | HTML document
 i   |     -    | Informational text (not selectable)
 p   |   TEXT   | Page layout or markup document (plain text w/ ASCII tags)
 m   |  BINARY  | Email repository (MBOX)
 s   |  BINARY  | Audio recordings
 x   |   TEXT   | eXtensible Markup Language document
 ;   |  BINARY  | Video files

Commonly used:
Type | Treat as | Meaning
--------------------------
 !   |     -    | [SERVER ONLY] Menu title (set title ONCE per gophermap)
 #   |     -    | [SERVER ONLY] Comment, rest of line is ignored
 -   |     -    | [SERVER ONLY] Hide file/directory from directory listing
 *   |     -    | [SERVER ONLY] Last line + directory listing -- stop processing
     |          |               gophermap and end on a directory listing
 =   |     -    | [SERVER ONLY] Include or execute subgophermap, cgi-bin or regular
     |          |               file here.

Compliance

We aim to comply more with GopherII (see in references below).

Item types

Supported item types are listed above.

Informational lines are sent as i<text here>\t/\tnull.host\t0.

Titles are sent as i<title text>\tTITLE\tnull.host\t0.

Web address links are sent as h<text here>\tURL:<address>\thostname\tport. An HTML redirect is sent in response to any requests beginning with URL:.

Policy files

Upon request, caps.txt can be provided from the server root directory containing server capabiities. This can either be user or server generated.

Upon request, robots.txt can be provided from the server root directory containing robot access restriction policies. This can either be user or server generated.

Errors

Errors are sent according to GopherII standards, terminating with a last line: 3<error text>CR-LF

Possible Gophor errors:

     Text                 |      Meaning
400 Bad Request           | Request not understood by server due to malformed
                          | syntax
401 Unauthorised          | Request requires authentication
403 Forbidden             | Request received but not fulfilled
404 Not Found             | Server could not find anything matching requested
                          | URL
408 Request Time-out      | Client did not produce request within server wait
                          | time
410 Gone                  | Requested resource no longer available with no
                          | forwarding address
500 Internal Server Error | Server encountered an unexpected condition which
                          | prevented request being fulfilled
501 Not Implemented       | Server does not support the functionality
                          | required to fulfil the request
503 Service Unavailable   | Server currently unable to handle the request
                          | due to temporary overload / maintenance

Terminating full stop

Gophor will send a terminating full-stop for menus, but not for served or executed files.

Placeholder (null) text

All of the following are used as placeholder text in responses...

Null selector: -

Null host: null.host

Null port: 0

Resources used

Gopher-II (The Next Generation Gopher WWIS): https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-matavka-gopher-ii-00

Gophernicus source (a great gopher daemon in C): https://github.com/gophernicus/gophernicus

All of the below can be viewed from your standard web browser using floodgap's Gopher proxy: https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw

RFC 1436 (The Internet Gopher Protocol: gopher://gopher.floodgap.com:70/0/gopher/tech/rfc1436.txt

Gopher+ (upward compatible enhancements): gopher://gopher.floodgap.com:70/0/gopher/tech/gopherplus.txt