[NNTP] 32 bit article counters

[Steve Walker]

Clive D.W. Feather wrote:

> But I think that there needs to be a fixed limit. Bignums are too expensive
> in this context.

No limits have worked very well so far.  Hardware has kept up 
with need.  People used 32 bit numbers in the past because that's 
what the hardware/software supported and it was all that was 
needed at the time.  People can now use 64 bit numbers because 
that's what modern hardware/software supports.  In reality, I 
don't see 64 bit article numbers overflowing in my children 
lifetime.  I can live with 64 bit numbers, they will work.

If everyone hates text based numbers then does anyone have a 
major problem with this:

6.
[snip]
Article numbers MUST lie between 1 and 2^64-1 inclusive.
The client and server MAY use leading zeros in specifying
article numbers, but MUST NOT use more than 20 digits.

It seems the least likely to cause anything to break that wasn't 
going to break regardless.  It also appears to follow what some 
of the software developers are already doing, myself included.

Steve.