mhonarc-users

Re: persistently linking to within archives

1999-11-21 18:22:47
On 11/21/99 at 2:59 PM, asgilman(_at_)iamdigex(_dot_)net (Al Gilman) wrote:

The point is to continue the pattern where Resent-ID: the header for a
mailing list manager which sends forward a message lacking a
Message-ID: from the originating node.

Could you rephrase this?  I don't understand it.

I have no prior familiarity with the MS-tnef correlator attribute, or
with <mid> URLs.  I'll continue to spelunk through the W3C site, but
it's about as maddening as it's ever been if one doesn't already know
what one wants and where to find it -- I'd greatly appreciate some
pointers on what exactly it is that you're referring to.

This gives the processing software a search-list of Message-ID,
Resent-ID, Archived-ID with which to satisfy the need for a Unique-ID.
 Compare with the abortive introduction of the MS-tnef correlator
attribute.

I'm not clear on your usage of 'search-list', so I don't understand how
it impacts the need for a unique ID.  I haven't discovered, at this
point, why I'd ever want to get into the business of verifying
uniqueness (or assigning supplementary unique IDs) beyond the
Message-ID, with the MD5 replacement as a backup.  The prospect seems to
fall somewhere between daunting and horrifying. 

I have run across one case where the message-ID is not sufficient to
determine the message's uniqueness -- when we start talking about
spanning multiple MHonArc archives, we run across the possibility that
the same message will be legitimately sent to multiple lists.  

This is not much of a factor in MHonArc's multi-archive annotation
(because the note is likely to be relevant to all instances of a
message), but it is a serious flaw in a monolithic shared repository. 
If someone's looking for the message beginning a specific thread in
Widgetlist A, it won't do for them to get instead the same announcement
as it appeared in Widgetlist B.

So, while I admit that the message-ID is insufficient in at least one
common case, I'm inclined to look for the simplest possible resolution,
and I don't understand your suggestions well enough to evaluate them.

thanks for your time.

  -nat