Subj : message-id
To   : andrew clarke
From : Jasen Betts
Date : Thu Oct 31 2002 08:01 pm

ac> FTS-9 MSGIDs are not unique enough to be accurately relied upon.

sure they are, FTS-9 says they don't reapeat for three years,

of course many implementations don't ensure that.

IMO what's needed is a proper implementation of FTS-9

eg using sequential numbers from a single source for all the messagids on
the system.

At it simplest This means about 15 lines of C. (or pascal, bssic etc) in
each program where they generate the message-ids, and a key file somewhere
where all the mail processors can reach it,

Maybe another kludge could be added to indicate the the msgid so generated
is guaranteed to be unique.

 ac> Implementations that generate a Message-ID may also optionally
 ac> generate a MSGID conforming to the FTS-9 standard for systems that
 ac> do not recognise the Message-ID.

is there going to be a replacemnt to the REPLY kludge too ?

Relying or random numbers isn't going to do much good when the randim
numbers are seeded from the clock, and many common random number generators
are only good for a few bits anyway (eg 24bits with ms-basic)

what's the point of repeating the date-time in the message-id anyway?
it's already in the message header.

one solution to different applications generating matching msgids is to
give the different appications diffrerent addresses - eg give the news
autoposter a point address so it can't clash with the message editor.

someone sent me a copy of the pktfix source for a bug-fix (message size
limit removed) maybe I could implement this uniquing scheme, to see how
complex it really is...

 -=> Bye <=-

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 * Origin: Death: to stop sinning suddenly. (3:640/531.42)

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