mhonarc-users

Re: msgid instead of seq. number for output files

1998-07-30 22:33:14
On July 30, 1998 at 14:25, Achim Bohnet wrote:

I've got a lot of messages in the archive that contain an
URL to other message in the archive (or others here).  Regrouping,
remove spam etc, would change the msg number used :-(   Msg-Id are
also much easier to use to do lookup of messages between the (sub)
archives of a mailing list.

Yep.

Note, I am confused anout some of what you said.  How would message
numbers get changed?  The only way this can happen is if you
recreate the archive from scratch.  And if this is what is done,
there should be no problems?  Can you elaborate?


So before I put it on top of my TODO list ...

Has anybody tried to patch mhonarc to use the msgid for the name of
file instead of the sequential numbering?  So files

      $msgid.html
      $msgid.$part.$ext

instead of

      msg$num.html
      $ext$num.$ext

? 

It is not easy.  The use of message numbers permeates throught the
code.  Ie.  A change in how filenames are generated  requires modification
in multiple locations.  It also will have an impact on certain features:

    o   NOSORT
    o   Database recovery (something I have implemented for the next
        release).  With the current scheme, it is easy to determine
        which files are message files to extract information from.
    o   Probably other stuff


Earl, does it make sense to make this bigger extention for mhonarc v2?

I'll look into it, but I do not know if it is an easy task.  MHonArc
is a good example of something that has grown beyond its original
design.

Or should one better wait and hack an alpha of mhonarc v3 (whenever
this will be).

Yes.  MHonArc v3 development has been extremely slow due to continuing
work on v2 (along with doing work that pays the bills).

Ah, before I get asked: If no message-id is given mhonarc should/will
create it's own id on the fly as it does now.

This will happen in the next release.  This is done to support
annotations (which, ironically, use message-ids as filenames).

        --ewh

----
             Earl Hood              | University of California: Irvine
      ehood(_at_)medusa(_dot_)acs(_dot_)uci(_dot_)edu      |      Electronic 
Loiterer
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