GopherVR
Encyclopedia
In 1995, the Gopher developers at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
released GopherVR. Using Gopher+
Gopher+
Gopher+ is a forward compatible enhancement to the RFC [ftp://ftp.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt 1436] Gopher protocol. Gopher+ works by sending extra data between the client and the server.-How it works:...
protocol extensions, spatial positions for Gopher resources are specified, and GopherVR clients combine traditional gopher hierarchy browsing with 3D scene navigation. It was primarily written by Mark P. McCahill
Mark P. McCahill
Mark P. McCahill is an American programmer who has been involved in developing and popularizing a number of Internet technologies since the late 1980s....
, Paul Lindner and Neophytos Iacovou. This original version was available for Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, using Motif
Motif (widget toolkit)
In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...
and X11
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
, and the classic Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
; although incomplete, they were offered as partially functional alpha versions for testing.
Unfortunately, the software packages for GopherVR were stored on the UMN Boombox FTP
File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
server and (probably due to a defective backup and restore) virtually all Gopher software on this server over 96k in length had become corrupted, resulting in the loss of all publicly available copies of the source code until it was rediscovered and made available by Mark McCahill in June 2008.
In December 2009, GopherVR was re-released by Cameron Kaiser in an updated form for Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and other platforms. It is still considered incomplete.
External links
- [gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/gophervr Floodgap GopherVR project gopherspace] includes source code and Mac OS X binaries
- Paper - A Preliminary Design for a 3-D Spatial User Interface for Internet Gopher
- Paper - Announcing GopherVR
- Rediscovered source code
- GopherVR in Launchpad
- Paper - Customizing Unix Servers For 3D
- TurboGopherVR Client for Mac at Sunet
- GopherVR Client for Irix at Sunet