[Mailman-Users] attachements question

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "John" == John W Baxter <jwblist at olympus.net> writes:

    John> In addition, the Message-Id values would have to be
    John> filtered, if used as is, for URL-unfriendly characters

I don't think so.  AFAIK, that was fixed about 2000 RFCs ago.  When
used as URLs, conforming agents will URL-encode them.  How the archive
chooses to implement identifying a storage location from the decoded
URL is up to it.  The URL-encoded string as filename is an obvious
choice, but database-based archives might just use the raw Message-ID.

BTW, I just realized that Google probably does index Message-IDs
already (as long as the archived message includes that header), so
Googleability is _not_ an advantage of my scheme over the header
digest approach.  The ability to algorithmically construct URNs and
URLs however still is.

    John> There's also the small point that the presence of
    John> Message-Id: is a SHOULD, not a MUST (some compromise in the
    John> musty past of the IETF, no doubt).

I would guess that's for the convenience of folks who use "telnet HOST
25" as their MTA.  Humans are notoriously bad at generating unique
anything.<wink>  Anyway, my algorithm just treats such messages as a
collision with all the others that don't have Message-IDs.


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