Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!news.funet.fi!funic!hks
From: hks@nic.funet.fi (Harri Salminen)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Ideas for Message-ID's
Message-ID: <1991Apr16.174706.4963@nic.funet.fi>
Date: 16 Apr 91 17:47:06 GMT
References: <3427@litchi.bbn.com> <3434@litchi.bbn.com>
Reply-To: hks@funet.fi
Organization: Finnish University & Research Network
Lines: 39

Would it be possible to have after the time a checksum calculated over
the most of the message? The checksum calculation should could include at
least the newsgroup name and subject if not everything.  It's unlikely
that even an automatic program sends within one second two messages
with same subject to same newsgroup. If you're worried that it still
might be the same in some very rare circumstances it should be
relatively easy to have the rejection routine to make a diff (or just
compare wordcount) with the original message and send it to news
manager for perusal.

Including the newsgroup name would make it possible to munge the
message-ids to become consistently different when gatewayed to two
different newsgroups from mail. In theory you shouldn't tamper with
message-ids if they are already present but in practise you might have
to or the message might get lost. The other way around the problem
would be to change all history database implementations to include the
newsgroup name or number in some form which would have to be changed
in all nodes wanting to benefit from this feature... Third and best
alternative which I hope could someday be achieved is to standardize
mailing lists at least as clearly as news messages so that
crossposting, followups, references etc. would work nicely giving us a
truly global distributed group communication service (some would call
it computer conferencing I presume)

The other advantage of this style of message id (marked with some special
delimiter?) could be used to detect problems in message transport. Since
most of us haven't yet migrated to use some single ISO standard character
set only US ASCII representations of 0-9, a-z and A-Z which are common
to almost all systems should be used. 

Harri



-- 
Harri K Salminen - Finnish University & Research Network project
hks@funet.fi, LK-HS at FINHUTC, tut!hks, OPMVAX::hks, OH2LGE@OH2RBI
FUNET c/o VTKK/TLP, PL 40,  02101 Espoo, Finland - +358-0-4572288
"Virtually, I don't work, I just netWORK :-)"