[gopher] Re: Process question

["Aaron J. Angel" <aangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mmm...this is a bit late, actually, but here it is.

   > Since I'm opting to use a gophermap file (in each dir), I'll need to
   > keep it updated with new additions.
   >
   > Is my understanding correct?  If not, I'd appreciate some pointers as
   > to how you go about keeping your gopher server healthy and well-fed.

Yes, that's correct; if you use gophermap in directories, you have to
add everything you want to be seen on the menu.  An alternative, if you
just want a description for files, is to use metafiles (by creating a
file with the same name and appending .abstract) to hold the
descriptions.  This will still show anything that doesn't have an
abstract, but will give you an opportunity to provide one if you like.
For example, in the gopher directory you have:

.abstract - Text about the contents of the directory itself
my-life-story.txt - Contains your life story
my-life-story.txt.abstract - Contains a line of text: X's Life Story
some-other-file.ext - something else

The menu will look like:

(contents of .abstract)

(link) my-life-story
           X's Life Story
(link) some-other-file.ext

You can't, however, modify the name shown of the links this way.
Another method you could use is a .cap file, which is from UMN Gopherd,
and allows you to rename only certain files, but still shows all of
them, regardless of their being mentioned in the .cap file.  Something
like this works nicely.  Create a directory called .cap/, and have files
under it with the same name as the file in the parent directory:

.abstract
my-life-story.txt
.cap/ - Directory
.cap/my-life-story.txt - Contains the following:
        Name = X's Life Story
some-other-file.ext

And this is the menu:

(contents of .abstract)

X's Life Story
some-other-file.ext

It seems that .caps files do not work with .abstracts for the same file,
so beware.  Also, you can read the gopherd manual page (if you have it;
else, you can look somewhere on the web, there is plenty of
information), for other options you can use in .cap files to modify
thinks like Gopher types, placement on the menu, etc.  Of course, the
use of .cap/ and gophermap fails with one taking precedence.

Hope this helps.

-Aaron