Bob Jones wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 RJT> Because with *.MSG being stored one message-per-file,  the 
 RJT> software (at least some of it) would look for each and every 
 RJT> number,  starting from 1,  by way of dos filesystem calls,  which 
 RJT> was very slow and inefficient.  Putting them all together with 
 RJT> consecutive low numbers does away with this problem.

 RJT> OTOH so would a linked list...

 RJT> And you're using *.msg?

 BJ> Roy:

 BJ> Now that I have a Linux test box running Max/Squish/BinkD (in
 BJ> manual mode), I have an idea....

 BJ> Since the squish code includes a routine for converting from *.msg 
 BJ> to Squish and from Squish to *.msg, would it do what you want by 
 BJ> converting the area from *.msg to squish and then back?

Interesting question.  Not what *I* want,  necessarily,  I'm happy with
Squish bases here,  I forget who it was that raised that question...

 BJ> I suspect Squish qould renumber when converting from squish back 
 BJ> to *.msg (in a clean area).  I just don't know what the 
 BJ> side-effects would be....  At least it provides an option for the 
 BJ> short term.....  I haven't tried this yet.....

Message numbers are funny things.  I remember seeing some that went to
absurdly high levels in some areas when I was using other editors,  though
it's been so long since I've used anything else that now I can't remember
which those were any more.

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