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- FSC-0031 May 1, 1989
-
-
- EchoMail ^aEID: Dup-Checking with Linked Replies
- A Proposal To The FidoNet Technical Standards Committee
-
-
-
- Currently, no universal methodology for implementing echomail
- duplicate message checking exists. One thing is certain - they
- will only increase in number as the shear volume of echomail is
- increasing every day!
-
- In order to catch the highest percentage of duplicates possible
- it is desirable to utilize a system which actually tags each of
- the messages themselves with a distinct messages identifier to
- be used to check against an existing database of all previous
- messages' identifiers. In practice, this is not possible, but
- we can limit the number of previous identifiers kept so that
- processing is quick but still almost certain to eliminate any
- duplicate messages.
-
-
- This also provides an easy method of linking replies to their
- original message by appending the previous identifier. Using
- a linked reply technique allows easy relinking of the messages
- to the original message, assuming it still exists.
-
-
- This proposed ^aEID: kludge line specifications are as follows:
-
- 1) A 16-bit CRC followed by a 32-bit DOS file date/time stamp.
-
- 2) The 16-bit CRC is calculated by first CRC'ing all but the
- first 11 (static) characters of the origin line, followed
- by the first two "words" of the from name, the first two
- words of the to name, and the first 25 characters of the
- subject line after stripping leading occurances of "Re: "
- sequences.
-
-
- Notes: You must always upper-case the to/from/subject fields,
- as some current processors will change the case of that text.
- Using only the first two words of the from and to names will
- eliminate the potential problem when some processors add the
- " of xxx/yyy" to the end. Stripping all leading occurances
- of the "Re: " in the subject field is also done to eliminate
- the possibility of changed subject lines not matching with
- the original message, which is also the reason for limiting
- the length of that field to the first 25 bytes (after taking
- off all the "Re: " sequences), because adding the leading
- "Re: " may force characters out (because they are beyond the
- 72-character field limit).
-
-
- When you must add an EID line for a message which is not local,
- you have to zero the seconds field before creating the 32-bit
- time stamp - some processors eliminate this information! This
- limitation can be overcome if most editors insert them at the
- time they are written.
-
-
-
- Automatic reply linking
- ========= ===== =======
-
- When replying to a message with an ^aEID: line, extend the new
- ^aEID: with the ^aEID: fields of the original message. The new
- line would look like this:
-
- ^aEID: xxxx yyyyzzzz uuuu vvvvwwww
-
- Where 'uuuu vvvvwwww' is the Eid information of the original
- message. Only one previous message's information is retained.
-