Subj : a dear deer visitor
To   : Wilfred van Velzen
From : August Abolins
Date : Sun Apr 11 2021 08:56:00

Hello Wilfred!

** On Sunday 11.04.21 - 13:05, you wrote to me:

 AA>> For msgid purposes why not just generate a 6 to 9
 AA>> character hash based on the content of the message?  That
 AA>> would ALWAYS be unique and never repeat for a l-o-n-g
 AA>> time.

 WvV> There are those moderator messages that stay the same for
 WvV> ages...

Not if the hash includes the entire msg and the date posted.

 AA>> The current approach for msgid has been to have serial number.
 AA>> But why can't it be a simple hash?

 WvV> A good secure hash, needs a lot of cpu to be calculated.

Even a simple random num generator could work.  For example, the  
following took less than a sec to produce:

H:\myutils>rando2
lfz$bkmcmmg36ye@jll1xpieaats

H:\myutils>rando2
7zc3i6btkuwyax2tpbh814$392c

H:\myutils>rando2
g~zys4kmp$9s0h@4jxp169j##8eskb

H:\myutils>rando2
p67v3h$vy3pdqo9t6rueljbv0qf

H:\myutils>rando2
m0s#trrv~bxjsg0f$mo29q8g$6699l

H:\myutils>rando2
$3111un9@je2dey$jwdehlzk01g

H:\myutils>rando2
q5ur8jolf#@4227~#73g99@lpy0dh@

H:\myutils>rando2
u4iouevy9yrh6~1it~2z$asr5y@

H:\myutils>rando2
cu1#0wqju$11~1lu#gklu52o9#k3v

So..  why couldn't something like that be implemented? And,  
instead of limiting the "serialno" to hex chars, use the entire  
alphabet and throw in some extra chars (# $ ~ % & *)

 AA>> Synchronet systems have come up with another unique
 AA>> approach to the MSGID line which seems to cooperate with
 AA>> existing systems quite well.

 WvV> It isn't according to the standard, which might cause some
 WvV> problems on other systems.

I thought it was copacetic with other systems. On which ones  
does it break?

 WvV> And I think it went like this: They miss used the MSGID to
 WvV> store some internal information for their messagebase, and
 WvV> came up with an excuse afterwards, when it was difficult
 WvV> to correct.

I remember something about the MSGID being referred to as a two- 
part string with "origaddr" + "serialno", where "origaddr" is  
intended to be a qualified "address of the originating system".

Most systems keep it simple:

 z:f/n.p hhhhhhhh

And some others look like:

 n.areaname@z:f/n.p hhhhhhhh

--
  ../|ug

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