ietf-nntp New wording on article numbers - draft 2

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Chris Caputo said:
>>     Article numbers MUST lie between 1 and 4 294 967 295 inclusive. The
>>     client and server SHOULD NOT use leading zeroes in specifying article
>>     numbers, and MUST NOT use more than 16 digits. In some situations the
>>     value zero replaces an article number to show some special situation.
> What was the reasoning on limiting the length to 16 digits?  It seems
> arbitrary.

It was. Putting *a* limit means that it's possible to plan things like
buffer sizes. If we forbad leading zeroes, that would give an effective
limit of 10, but I expected that to create too many squarks. So I picked a
round number.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather    | Associate Director  | Director
Tel: +44 181 371 1138 | Demon Internet Ltd. | CityScape Internet Services Ltd.
Fax: +44 181 371 1150 | <clive at demon.net>   | <cdwf at cityscape.co.uk>