Subj : message-id
To   : Scott Little
From : Jasen Betts
Date : Sat Nov 09 2002 07:05 am

Hi Scott.

08-Nov-02 08:04:45, Scott Little wrote to Jasen Betts


 SL> [ 06 Nov 02 18:52, Jasen Betts wrote to andrew clarke ]

 JB>> That was another idea I toyed with, making the serial number
 JB>> engine pluggable... where the editor (etc) rouns an external prog
 JB>> to generate the serial number.

 SL> Or a library.

I had to write it to count the lines... I could turn it into a C library
fuunction, and do it in pascal too. I guess even basic too... :)

 ac>>> Although I still think a random number generator seeded with the
 ac>>> year + month + day + hour + minute + second + subsecond would do
 ac>>> a pretty reasonable job if the string to be generated was long
 ac>>> enough.  I guess I should do some tests
 JB>> yeah, but no better than just using the year + month + day + hour
 JB>> + minute + second + subsecond

 SL> It's better but still not guaranteed.

same seed same result that's how RNGs work.

 SL> rand() would have to return
 SL> the same number twice in the same millisecond for this method to
 SL> fail

If you're seeing it once per pkt (or other gropuping of messages)
ithere's no guarantee that it won't give the same number it gave yesterday
or last week some time. or even last year..

the easiest way to ge unique numbers is to use each number once.
the easiest way to do that is just to use them in order.

 JB>> So converters will be needed for people with old software who
 JB>> want to see threads, or will both MSGID always be present in
 JB>> messages with with a message-id

 SL> I suppose the message-id could form the domain of the origaddr
 SL> part of the old msgid, since that will still allow most mail
 SL> readers to extract Z:N/F as long as they don't barf on the
 SL> length..

Z:N/F should come from the origin line anyway. (already some msgids don't
contain it). if if you can make the numbers unique that's all that's needed
a hint of some sort to indicate that they are unique  - a uniqueness
certificatte kludge would be sufficient for software that needs a unique
message identifier, if it doesn't see the crtificate then the msgid is
possibly non-unique and shouldn't be used asif it was uniue.

@MSGID: 3:640/531.42 819f2b77
@MSGIDUNIQUE

or maybe it could go in the address part of the msgid, not sure how really.

 -=> Bye <=-

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 * Origin: How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers (3:640/531.42)

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