[NNTP] Re: Nearly there

[Charles Lindsey]

In <20060810092651.GA7161 at finch-staff-1.thus.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

Just returned from 10 days holiday, and find this list a hive of activity!

>(1)  (which include capability names) are limited to 12 characters,
>but we already have a keyword ("IMPLEMENTATION") which is longer than that.
>The majority view was to remove the limit completely:

Agreed.


>(2) What should the limit be on article numbers? At present it is 2^32-1,
>but there were proposals:
>- to make it 2^31-1, because some existing implementations use signed 32
>  bit types to hold the article number and we should be documenting
>  existing practice;
>- to make it 2^64-1, either as a SHOULD or a MUST;
>- to have no limit, but warn that existing implementations have limits.
>There were also proposals for solving the limit (my BIGNUM proposal and
>someone else's wrapping proposal), but these were not intended to go into
>this document.

I still favour some sort of wrapping rather than BIGNUM (but obviously not
for this draft). So please avoid anything that appears to commit us to one
or the other solution (the modified explanatory text might be read as
committing us to BIGNUM).

I am happy to make it 2^31-1, which seems to be the consensus. Any
wrapping scheme that might be proposed later will just have to fit within
that.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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