[gopher] Trying to figure out setting up Gopher server

[James Milne <jmilne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm interested in using Gopher for a few projects I have in mind, but
I'm having some trouble figuring out how to actually set things up.

First off, I'm currently trying to run gopherd 2.3.1 on Solaris
2.6. I managed to get it up and running from reading the man files,
and have a pretty basic setup for testing right now. I'm still
confused on a number of things though.

I started out by creating a few directories off /gopher-data and put
some smallish text files in them. Then I created a .link file in
/gopher-data. It looks like this:

Name=Net.txt
Type=0
Host=gopher2
Port=70
Path=0/Net.txt
Numb=1

Two boxes running, this .link file would be on gopher1, so I've got a
link pointing to a file on the second machine. (Likewise, gopher2 is
pointing to a file on gopher1.)

When I pull everything up in Lynx, I get this:

                                  Gopher Menu

(FILE) Net.txt (DIR) HTML-files
 (DIR) Text-files


Which works and all, but I was hoping to get something a bit nicer to
look at, like gopher://gopher.quuk.org. Something where everything is
down the left-hand side, where you have a little text at the top to
sorta explain what everything is, etc. I haven't found the
documentation on how to do that, or perhaps I haven't understood the
documentation on how to do that.

I'm also somewhat confused as to what I should be using at
times. .map, .cap, .link, etc... 

I know Gopher isn't really "pretty", and I'm more interested in
getting results, but it would still be nice to layout everything nicer
and explain things a bit better. Can anyone provide a nice guide on
how to actually "write" Gopher sites, akin to the many HTML tutorials
I could find?

Thanks.

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             James Milne
       jmilne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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