Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: Why are C news Message-IDs so non-minimalist?
Message-ID: <1989Dec1.020710.13324@utstat.uucp>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto
References: <1989Nov30.162609.9435@phri.nyu.edu>
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 89 02:07:10 GMT

I don't want to cope with rewriting a sequence-number file, since it's
a nuisance to avoid damaging it if the system crashes during the update.
The current verbose format is easy to generate in a shell script (i.e.
inews) and should be unique, though I regret the verbosity.  I'm in the
midst of revising inews and the new one should invoke a little program
to generate a compact and unique message-id (well, local-part) without
the aid of a sequence-number file.

What surprises me is that no one has complained about the host-part of
message-ids.  utstat still claims to be utstat.uucp; if it were to
claim to be utstat.toronto.edu (or even utstat.utstat.toronto.edu), the
host-part would meet or exceed the size of the current, bloated
local-part.  And we have short domain names; even given B-style
local-parts, nothing can help
<1234@national-institute-for-medical-research.mrc.ac.uk> or
<5678@vax.cancer-clinical-trials-unit.birmingham.ac.uk>, not even
compress (I did not make up the host-parts, honest).

department-of-statistics-university-of-toronto-ontario-canada-m5s-1a1.utstat.toronto.edu!geoff
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu