Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online

7.9. I don't have Telnet or any other direct Internet connection. Can I use Gopher through electronic mail?

A small number of sites on the Internet are experimenting with electronic mail-based query systems for Gopher. This service certainly isn't as elegant as using Gopher the standard, interactive way, but it does provide a wealth of information for the millions of folks without interactive Internet accounts.

There are four GopherMail addresses at the time of this writing.

gopher@solaris.ims.ac.jp
gophermail@calvin.edu
gophermail@ncc.go.jp
gopher@earn.net
You can start by sending mail to gophermail@calvin.edu; subject line and message body are ignored. GopherMail will reply with its home page. You then use your e-mail program to reply to that message, including it in the text of your reply. Mark the menu choices that you are interested in by putting an X before the menu numbers of the interesting menu choices. From there you can just keep repeating the process, sending replies back to Gopher while marking your desired items.

Let's let the calvin.edu service speak for itself.

You can get started by sending mail to gopher@calvin.edu with any 
or no subject and any or no message body. GopherMail will reply by 
sending you it's main gopher menu. You then use your email program 
to reply to that message, including it in the text of your reply. 
Mark which menu options you want to follow-up by putting an "X" 
(or "x") anywhere near the beginning of the line, before the menu 
numbers for those options.

From there you can just keep repeating the process, sending 
replies back to gopher with the desired items marked with an X. To 
make it more efficient, you could edit your replies so they 
contain just the gopher link information for the items that you 
want. You'll find all the link information after the menu, at the 
bottom of the menu messages that GopherMail sends to you. Some 
items on gopher menus are database searches and college phone 
books. To search for a particular name or keyword(s), you simply 
send them on the "Subject:" line of the message in which you've 
Xed the phonebook or WAIS database menu option.
Note that these services are all experimental and might well have changed by the time you try to use them. Also, if you have access to Gopher, it's a much better choice!

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