Text 107, 50 rader
Skriven 2005-02-16 15:23:34 av Maurice Kinal (1:153/401.1)
     Kommentar till en text av mark lewis (1:3634/12)
Ärende: MSGID
=============
Hey mark!

Feb 16 16:31 05, mark lewis wrote to Jame Clay:

 ml> that is and has been a problem in fidonet for a long time... mainly 
 ml> due to lazy coders and hobbiests doing the designing and implementing 
 ml> and not having enough or any forethough to the future...

That was more or less my best guess except that even in the "present" (past
from today's perspective) it shouldn't have been a problem even if the "future"
(errrr .. today?) wasn't considered.  Even for that time there was far more
going on then they were accounting for.  I don't think it is a big deal though
but others seem to think so for whatever reason(s).

 ml> many tossers 
 ml> are limited by slightly less than 64k message size because they pull 
 ml> the entire message into memory and work with it there rather than 
 ml> spooling excess stuff to temp disk storage to get to the end of the 
 ml> message and the needed tossing data stored there...

I don't think that is a real problem to compensate for, and might actually be a
good thing <patent pending>.  If pkt sizes (number of messages) aren't a
limitation then it makes it a tad easier to come up with a meaningful MSGID but
I still think a larger number of characters would make all the difference as
far as processing time goes.  As far as any machine here is concerned seconds
are static over more then just a few messages, especially with a byte
limitation as to their size, so having at least a couple extra bytes to play
with and keeping a meaningful hex date/time stamp isn't such a bad idea
methinks.  Personally I prefer a year, day_of_the_year,hour,min,sec base hex
field that can be incremented by message number and a 10 character field
happensto work out quite nicely.  It could go the distance.  8 characters is
also doable but then increases the amount of steps to keep any meaningful
date/time information as well as increases the limitation as far as how many
years one can keep it unique.  I don't know why the three year limit especially
with no rhyme or reason behind how we all should be generating it.

 ml> that's an old DOS-think limitation...

Only DOS-think for those who believed we all should be limited by DOS-think.  I
think it can be overcome and perhaps even be exploited to all of our advantage.
 Chances are that anyone using software that old wouldn't even notice any
alterations at all.  They probably couldn't take advantage of any change but it
probably wouldn't hurt them either.  On the other hand doing nothing might hurt
everybody, including them, whoever them are.

Life is good,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX 6.1.2
 * Origin: Coffin Point - Ladysmith, BC Canada (1:153/401.1)