Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online
7.18. What about looking for specific programs or documents? Isn't that what Archie is for?
Archie is useful, but it isn't the only way to find files. Gopher and Veronica
can help, too. Because there isn't a unified information space on the Internet,
resources can appear in one area but be excluded from another simply due to the
methods that are used to collate data. In a nutshell, Gopher usually isn't the
best choice if the information you seek is likely to be found in an FTP
archive. Instead, that's where the Archie program comes in handy. (Archie is
covered in Chapter 6, "How Can I Find and Use Software (and Other Stuff)?" If
you have it on your system, you'll be able to type Archie and work
directly with the program. If not, don't despair; there are a number of hosts
on the net that support remote Archie queries.
For example, I might have some documents that I make available through
anonymous FTP and register with the local Archie server. Because I don't have
Gopher available, it doesn't end up cited in Gopherspace, so a search for my
document with Veronica will fail, whereas a search for the same document in
Archie will succeed. Often the opposite is true, too. That's why there are some
new, smarter, information-searching tools popping up such as Knowbots.
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