Re: Why article numbers?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> Don't ask for a particular number of articles.  Ask for "all unread
> articles".

That's not what the user asks for.  The user may ask for "the last
200 articles, whether read or unread", or "the last 5 read articles". 

> Also note that numbers are still very natural article identifiers for
> some backends, like nntp.  Those backends could continue to use
> numbers, and could do range compression in their storage.  We would
> only *allow* identifiers to be non-numeric, not require it.  The only
> requirement would be that identifiers must satisfy eq if they are
> supposed to identify the same article.  Then the code that takes
> advantage of numeric identifiers can be pushed to the other side of
> the backend interface.  It would be a lot of work, but I don't think
> there any any inherent problems beyond that.

"A lot of work" is an understatement, but what would the advantages
be?  (Other than making hard disk and ram manufacturers happy, that
is.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen