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GN server configuration

GN is a multi-protocol server and will respond to both HTTP and Gopher requests. It determines which protocol is being used for a request by examining the first line of the request.

Gopher is a network information system developed at the University of Minnesota, and takes a different view of information from that taken by the Web. Gopher regards information as being structured by a hierarchy of menus. The menus lead to resources, but individual resources cannot themselves contain links to other resources. The content of menus is described in control files, which are compiled into a succinct format, referred to as cache files. For historical reasons GN uses cache files with the same basic structure as those used by the University of Minnesota Gopher server.

• GN cache files
  • Basic keywords
  • Type modifiers
  • Extended keywords
  • Search items within menus
  • Including HTML within menus
  • Protocol-dependent menu items
  • Executing programs to generate documents
• GN command line arguments

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.