GN Release 1.1
       A Free Multi-protocol Server for Gopher and HTTP


FEATURES:       ( *  means new in version 1.1)

    o  Support for WAIS index searches. (See below) (*)

    o  HTTP support -- GN serves two protocols gopher0 and HTTP/1.0,
       the protocol used by WWW clients.  GN recognizes the protocol
       from the request and responds appropriately. This allows the
       use of WWW browsers like Mosaic in their native mode.

    o  Per Directory Access control.

    o  Support for structured files.

    o  Support for compressed files.

    o  Builtin menu hierarchy searches.

    o  Free for any use, commercial or otherwise! (GNU license)

AVAILABLE BY ANONYMOUS FTP:

   FTP to: ftp.acns.nwu.edu
   Get file pub/gn/gn-1.1.tar.Z

OR VIA GOPHER:

   Server: hopf.math.nwu.edu     port 70
   Get file:  gn-1.1.tar.Z

   You can also browse the source and documentation here.



Gn is a gopher/HTTP server which is written in C and runs under UNIX.
It is freely available for any use, commercial or otherwise.  The
software is freely redistributable under the terms of the GNU public
license.  There is good documentation -- three man pages and an
extensive installation and maintenance guide.

Gn has "per directory" access control.  You can have different access
(by IP address or subnet) to every directory if you want to. You don't
need to run different servers on different ports to have different
levels of access!

Gn supports the standard text and binary types, including sound and
image.  Index types include programs (or shell scripts) which return
"virtual directories" and also "grep" type searches.  GN runs only
under inetd.  See the man page for details.

Starting with version 1.1 the GN gopher/http protocol server has
support for WAIS index searches. This means you can index a collection
of files with the index software designed for use with WAIS (Wide Area
Information Server) and the gn server will respond to user queries by
providing a menu of those documents from your collection which contain
a match for the user supplied search term. Simple boolean combinations
like `horses and cows' or `fox not goose' are supported.

WAIS index support is provided by means of an auxiliary program
provided with the gn distribution, called waisgn. In order to use this
program the server maintainer must first obtain and compile the WAIS
software distribution. This provides the program waisindex which
creates the indices and the libraries which must be linked with the
waisgn program. When the gn server receives a WAIS index query it
execs (in the UNIX sense) the waisgn program passing the search term
to it. That is, it turns itself into the waisgn program by replacing
the server in memory with the waisgn binary. There is no need to run a
WAIS server.

One reason for this design is size. The gn server is relatively small
and hence fairly efficient. The server I run is about 64K in size. The
waisgn program source is small but the libraries with which it must be
linked are not. The final binary for waisgn is 400K to 500K in
size. The design with two separate programs has several advantages.
First the efficiency of servers which are not using WAIS is not
degraded by its presence. Also WAIS is a complicated system to set up
and run. Having it done with a separate program makes it much easier
to check that things are functioning correctly and fix them if they
are not.

THANKS

I would like to thank the many people who have aided in the creation
of the GN package, either through writing code or finding and fixing
bugs.  They include Earle Ake, Henry Cejtin, Mike Crowley, Paul
DuBois, Don Gilbert, Jishnu Mukerji, Marko Nordberg, Jim Rees, Craig
Milo Rogers, Stephen Trier, Ed Vielmetti, and Rico Tudor.

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