MAP21: VERONICA

   "One must learn by doing the thing; though you think you know it,
                 you have no certainty until you try."
                   -- Publius Syrus, Moral Sayings


Bouncing around Gopherspace, finding neat files and leaving bookmarks, is
fun for a while.  Soon, however, you are going to want to find a way to
locate stuff in Gopherspace a little more quickly.

That's where Veronica comes in.  Veronica -- Very Easy, Rodent-Oriented,
Net-Wide Index to Computerized Archives -- is a search tool that allows you
to quickly scan Gopherspace for particular files and directories.

Veronica is a program that you access through Gopher.  Veronica asks you to
enter a keyword, and it then searches through a database of over 5,500
Gopher servers and over 15 million Gopher "items" for files and directories
whose titles contain your keyword.

What makes Veronica REALLY amazing is that it not only finds these files
and directories, it also *GETS* all of these files and directories and
places them into a temporary Gopher menu through which you can browse!
This temporary menu works just like any other Gopher menu!

There are really only five steps to using Veronica:

     1. Start up your Gopher client,
     2. Go to a Veronica menu somewhere in Gopherspace,
     3. Pick a Veronica server through which you want to conduct
        your search,
     4. Type in a keyword that you want Veronica to search for, and
     5. Browse through the "results" that Veronica finds.

Let's take a look at a basic Veronica search.  The best place to start is
the "mother of all Gopher servers" at the University of Minnesota
(gopher.micro.umn.edu).  To access this Gopher directly from my command
line, I type

     gopher gopher.micro.umn.edu

and press the ENTER or RETURN key.  BTW, this is just the

     gopher 

command that we talked about in MAP19.

Once I press the ENTER or RETURN key, the following appears on my screen:

Rice CMS Gopher 2.4.0                             gopher.micro.umn.edu
1/12
   Minnesota Gopher Server (Gopher.micro.umn.edu 70)
      Information About Gopher
      Computer Information
      Discussion Groups
      Fun & Games
      Internet file server (ftp) sites
      Libraries
      News
_     Other Gopher and Information Servers
      Phone Books
    Search Gopher Titles at the University of Minnesota
    Search lots of places at the University of Minnesota
      University of Minnesota Campus Information


Since I used the UNIX Gopher client the first two days of this week, I
figured it was only fair to use the VM Gopher client for two days as well.
:)

Veronica can be found in the "Other Gopher and Information Servers" menu at
the University of Minnesota, so I move the cursor down to the "Other Gopher
and Information Servers" menu line, press the ENTER or RETURN key, and the
following menu appears on my screen:


Rice CMS Gopher 2.4.0                                gopher.tc.umn.edu
1/15
                       Other Gopher and Information Servers
      All the Gopher Servers in the World
    Search All the Gopher Servers in the World
_     Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica
      Africa
      Asia
      Europe
... %< snip snip snip %< ...


Hmm ... I wonder which menu I need to choose. :)

I move the cursor down to "Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica,"
press the ENTER or RETURN key, and the following menu appears on my screen:


Rice CMS Gopher 2.4.0                                gopher.tc.umn.edu
1/16
                 Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica

    Find GOPHER DIRECTORIES by Title word(s) (via NYSERNet)
    Find GOPHER DIRECTORIES by Title word(s) (via PSINet)
    Find GOPHER DIRECTORIES by Title word(s) (via U. ...)
  Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ) ...
  How to Compose veronica Queries - June 23, 1994
      More veronica: Software, Index-Control ...
    Search GopherSpace by Title word(s) (via NYSERNet)
    Search GopherSpace by Title word(s) (via PSINet)
    Search GopherSpace by Title word(s) (via U. ...)
Simplified veronica chooses server - pick a search type:
    Simplified veronica: Find Gopher MENUS only
    Simplified veronica: find ALL gopher types
  how-to-query-veronica
  veronica-faq


This is going to be a little difficult to explain, but you get to choose
which Veronica server you want to use:

     1. You can choose a specific Veronica server (NYSERNet, PSINet, or
        U. Nac. Autonoma de MX) and run your search through that
        specific server, or

     2. You can do a "simplified" search and let Veronica choose a
        server for you.

There really is not much difference between these methods, so the choice is
really up to you.

Once you determine which server you are going to use, you have to determine
HOW you want to search through Gopherspace.  You have two choices:

     1. "Search GopherSpace by Title word(s)" (or "find ALL gopher
        types") which will show you EVERY FILE AND DIRECTORY in
        Gopherspace whose title contains the keyword for which you are
        looking, or

     2. "Find GOPHER DIRECTORIES by Title word(s)" (or "Find Gopher
        MENUS only") which will show you ONLY THE DIRECTORIES (a.k.a.
        menus) in Gopherspace whose titles contain the keyword for
        which you are looking.

Obviously, the return from a "GOPHER DIRECTORIES" search will be much
smaller than that from a "Search Gopherspace" search.  If you are using a
common word as your keyword (such as "Internet," "Gopher," "Economics,"
etc.), your best bet is to do a "GOPHER DIRECTORIES" search to keep from
being flooded with returns.  :)

I want to do a search of every Gopher directory on the planet that has the
word "Roadmap" in it.

As I said earlier, the choice of Veronica sites through which you conduct
your search is completely up to you.  There should not be a difference
between the sites and the results that you will get (notice I said *should*
not), so you can pick any site that you want.

I'll just use the first site on the list: NYSERNet.  I move the cursor to
"Find GOPHER DIRECTORIES by Title word(s) (via NYSERNet)," press the ENTER
or RETURN key, and the following appears on my screen:

     Enter keyword(s):

The keyword I want Veronica to look for is "Roadmap," so I type

     Roadmap

press the ENTER or RETURN key, prop my feet up on the desk, and wait for
something to appear on my screen.

Eventually, the following menu appears on my screen:


Rice CMS Gopher 2.4.0                              empire.nysernet.org
1/82        More
             Find GOPHER DIRECTORIES by Title word(s) (via NYSERNet)
      ROADMAP Internet Training Workshop   ***NUEVO***
      Roadmap for the Information Superhighway
      ROADMAP - Online Course on Using the Internet
      ROADMAP: an Internet Training Workshop by Patrick Crispen
      ROADMAP: an Internet Training Workshop by Patrick Crispen
      Roadmap Workshop on Internet and Popular Tools
... %< snip snip snip %< ...


COOL! Although each of these menus is located on different servers around
the world, I can access them ALL from this menu!  (BTW, searching for
"Roadmap" turned out to be a bad idea because all of the menus that
Veronica returned point to archives of the old Roadmap workshop, not to
archives of the updated Roadmap96 workshop.)  :(

Isn't Veronica NEAT??  There are a few more Veronica commands that you can
use, but I'll let you discover them in tonight's homework.  :)


PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS

I have personally had some problems with Veronica.  I'm not sure if I am
the only one who has had these problems, or if these problems are universal
-- it is quite possible that I am living in a Veronica "black hole" and
Veronica works perfectly well everywhere else but Alabama.

It is my personal experience that Veronica is so over-burdened that your
chances of getting the Veronica program to accept your keyword on the first
(or even the fifth) try are pretty slim.  More likely than not, you are
going to get a

     *** Too many connections - Try again soon. ***

message.  This can become very frustrating very quickly.  Other times, you
will encounter the now-famous

     Empty menu; no items selected or nothing available

error message that we discussed in MAP19.  This is also frustrating,
especially when you have to retype your keyword every time this error
appears on your screen.

The final error that I seem to encounter a lot in Veronica is the one that
tells me that Veronica has found nothing matching my keyword.
Unfortunately, experience has shown me that this may or may not be
accurate.

There are a couple of things that you have to remember when using Veronica:

     - Veronica is *incredibly* overloaded.
     - If a Veronica keyword search does not work the first time, keep
       trying.
     - When Veronica works, it is a thing of beauty.
     - When Veronica doesn't work, it gives you error messages that
       may or may not be accurate.
     - If you get an error message, try your keyword again.
     - The most important ingredient in any Veronica search is
       *PATIENCE*.

While I was writing this lesson, I also attempted a Veronica search using
the keyword "Crispen."  After 32 attempts, I still have not been able to
get Veronica to accept this keyword without giving me an error message.  :(



HOMEWORK:

     1. Play around with Veronica :)

     2. Find the Veronica FAQ and the "How to Compose Veronica
        Queries" documents and read them.  These documents can be
        found in most Veronica menus.  You can also find them in the
        "Search titles in Gopherspace using Veronica" menu on the
        University of Minnesota's Gopher server.

   (\__/)  .~    ~. ))
   /O O  ./      .'             Patrick Douglas Crispen
  {O__,   \    {               The University of Alabama
    / .  . )    \                crispen@campus.mci.net
    |-| '-' \    }            http://www.ua.edu/~crispen/
   .(   _(   )_.'
  '---.~_ _ _&                    Warning: squirrels.

        ROADMAP96: COPYRIGHT 1996 BY PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN.