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gopher.md

@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@ Gopher **doesn't use any [encryption](encryption.md)** (though some servers allo
 
 **How big is/was gopherspace?** In 1994 there were over 1300 gopher servers (source: 1994 book *Finding it on the Internet"*), around 1995 there were already more than 6000  (source: 1995 video *Searching the Internet - Gopher | The Internet Revealed*). Most of them are now gone, in 2005 there were only 145 servers reported by Veronica search engine (source: *2007 gopher archive*), though Gopher recently saw a new wave of popularity. As of 2023 the Veronica search engine reported 315 gopher servers in the world with 5+ million indexed selectors, which they estimated was 83% of the whole gopherspace (the peak server count was in 2020 at almost 400). Quarry search engine reports 369 servers and 1+ million indexed selectors. Contrition search engine reported even 495 servers and 7+ million selectors. The "grawler" crawler of gopherspace.de reported 192 active servers at the beginning of 2016, 182 in 2020, 413 in 2023 (bumped its search list) and 380 in 2024. Gopher LAWN directory (made by [bitreich](bitreich.md)) contains 281 selected quality gopher holes.
 
+{ PRO TIP: **Do you want to make your own gopher index?** You can easily use FOSS web crawlers such as [Yacy](yacy.md) and some kind of gopher web proxy. I tried it and it works, just remember to tell the crawler to not obey robots.txt as the proxies usually don't want to be crawled, just shit on them. This can not only give you a map of the gopherspace but also fulltext search. ~drummyfish }
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 From the user's perspective **the most important distinction from the Web** is that gopher is based on **menus** instead of "webpages"; a menu is simply a column of items of different predefined types, most importantly e.g. a *text file* (which clients can directly display), *directory* (link to another menu), *text label* (just shows some text), *binary file* etc. A menu can't be formatted or visually changed, there are no colors, images, scripts or [hypertext](hypertext.md) -- a menu is not a presentation tool, it is simply a navigation node towards files users are searching for (but the mentioned ASCII art and label items allow for somewhat mimicking "websites" anyway). Gopher is also often **browsed from the [command line](cli.md)**, though graphical clients are a thing too. Addressing works with [URLs](url.md) just as the Web, the URLs just differ by the protocol part (`gopher://` instead of `http://`), e.g.: `gopher://gopher.floodgap.com:70/1/gstats`. What on Web is called a "website" on gopher we call a **gopherhole** or just *hole* (i.e. a collection of resources usually under a single [domain](domain.md)) and the whole gopher network is called a **gopherspace**. [Blogs](blog.md) are common on gopher and are called **phlogs** (collectively a *phlogosphere*). As menus can refer to one another, gopher creates something akin to a **global [file system](file_system.md)**, so browsing gopher is like browsing folders and can comfortably be handled with just 4 arrow keys. Note that as menus can link to any other menu freely, the structure of the "file system" is not a [tree](tree.md) but rather a general [graph](graph.md). Another difference from the Web is gopher's great emphasis on **[plaintext](plaintext.md) and [ASCII art](ascii_art.md)** as it cannot embed images and other media in the menus (even though of course the menus can link to them). There is also a support for sending text to a server so it is possible to implement [search engines](search_engine.md), guest books, [games](game.md) etc.
 
 Gopher is just an [application layer](l7.md) [protocol](protocol.md) (officially running on [port](port.md) 70 assigned by [IANA](iana.md)), i.e it sits above lower layer protocols like [TCP](tcp.md) and takes the same role as [HTTP](http.md) on the Web and so only defines how clients and servers talk to each other -- the gopher protocol doesn't say how menus are written or stored on servers. Nevertheless for the creation of menus so called **gophermaps** have been established, which is a simple format for writing menus and are the gopher equivalent of Web's [HTML](html.md) files (just much simpler, basically just menu items on separate lines, the exact syntax is ultimately defined by server implementation). A server doesn't have to use gophermaps, it may be e.g. configured to create menus automatically from directories and files stored on the server, however gophermaps allow users to write custom menus manually. Typically in someone's gopherhole you'll be served a welcoming intro menu similar to a personal webpage that's been written as a gophermap, which may then link to directories storing personal files or other hand written menus. Some gopher servers also allow creating dynamic content with scripts called **moles**.