Re: SBBS/W32 Kermit SABOTAGE
  By: Paul Westell to Rob Swindell on Sat Oct 16 2004 07:29 am

 >  RS> I think it's only really a problem for those users that actually
 >  RS> *see* the
 >  RS> MSGID and recognize it as "different". FTN MSGID's
were not designed
 >  RS> for human
 >  RS> consumption, and as such, should not be judged by humans (IMHO). :-)
 > 
 > If the kludge lines were not meant to be available they would not be
 > human readable, and I believe should not be denied to any user. They
 > comprise part of the message and can be on occasion, enlightening.

The reason kludge lines are in the message text is because they ran out of room
in the pre-defined message/packet headers for additional fields, so they added
them in the message body with a "kludgey" escape format to
differentiate them
from the message text. That is why they are often referred to as "kludge"
lines. The fact that some programs optionally displays the kludge/control lines
does not mean they were intended to be viewed.

 > I frequently judge my softwear with the delete key, this end is often
 > hastened by intransigence as well as poor programming.

Okay. 
 
 > You have stated that the third field in the message ID is necessary
 > to overcome some deficiencies in the accepted FTN format. Please
 > detail these and how this third field avoids them. Although I am not
 > a programmer I have some grasp of the concepts, and I know there are
 > some as yet unheard from programmers following this.

It's been discussed to death in FTSC_PUBLIC and other echoes. To summarize, a
32-bit number, alone, is not enough data to insure message uniqueness without
jumping through great hoops to insure that number is not re-used by any 2
messages from the same system.

                                                  digital man

Snapple "Real Fact" #70:
A "jiffy" is actually 1/100 of a second.
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