Entity types

Official types

RFC 1436 specifies 14 selector types:

Text files

0

Text

4

Mac binhex †

6

Unix uuencoded †

†: Commonly treated like binary despite being text. Might or might not contain a stray . at the end.

Binary files

5

DOS binary or archive

9

Generic binary

I

Generic image

g

GIF image

Connection links

None of these are implemented in gophwr.

2

CSO phonebook

8

Telnet session

T

TN3270 telnet session

Special

1

Directory

3

Error message

7

Index search

+

Redundant/duplicate (“as above”)

Semi-official types

Gopher+ spec further defines generic multimedia entities in hopes that their specific types would be determined by their +VIEWS: fields.

Binary files

:

Generic bitmap image

;

Generic video

<

Generic audio

Unofficial types

Although RFC explicitly reserves [0-9A-Za-z], there are additional informal selector types. Some outdated selectors are overridden by more commonplace file types.

For instance, these types are served by Gophernicus:

Text files

M

MIME, such as mailbox

c

Calendar

h

HTML

Binary files

5

Archive, such as zip and tar

d

Document, such as PostScript and PDF

s

Generic audio

Connection links

h

WWW address if the selector path begins with URL:, although used for other protocols as well, such as FTP

Special

i

Info text (similar to 3)

Other unofficial types

Some of these are very common, others are rare and unrecognised by most clients:

Text files

H

Compact HTML

e

Event (similar to c)

m

Mailbox

p

Markup text

w

Wiki

x

XML

Binary files

2

Database

P

PDF

p

PNG image

Special

7

CGI query

w

WWW address