Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Ideas for Message-ID's
Message-ID: <1991Mar22.164021.24741@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1991 16:40:21 GMT
References: <3427@litchi.bbn.com> <1991Mar22.044131.3764@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Mar22.044131.3764@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> tar@math.ksu.edu (Tim Ramsey) writes:
>   <tttttttt.pppp@host>
>
>   where:    tttttttt is the return value of time(2) in base-16
>     and:    pppp is the process id
>...If you went to a larger radix this would be smaller.

This is what's planned for C News, in fact, with a carefully-chosen alphabet.
(You can't be too ambitious with the alphabet if you want to get it past all
the broken systems, e.g. B2.11 which does completely case-insensitive message-
ID matching, but you can do better than hex.)
-- 
"[Some people] positively *wish* to     | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry