200 character channel name limit

[Paul-Andrew Joseph Miseiko]

Based on that logic we might as well limit those 255 character file names 
to 63 because only a few people actually use legitimate file names of said 
length and we prefer to be selfishly restrictive based our own ideals.

Alas the world does not revolve around a single individual and 
specifications define a set of requirements to hopefully satisfy a range 
of individuals.  The argument "there is no need to support ridiculous 
values" is highly relative.

In an ideal world there would be no such limitations imposed on the 
individuals of a network, within reason.  The definition would be highly 
dynamic.  The problem with such configurations is that assigning dynamic 
memory is an annoying efficiency issue to programmers.

As for the jab at the 512 character limit imposed by the RFC, I personally 
don't see people typing over 100 character lines on a consistent basis, 
and even then most *good* IRC clients (like Icarus) are intelligent enough 
to break up the line into sections according to the RFC imposed limit not 
impacting the user at all.

--
ln -s /etc/passwd ~/.core; ping localhost &; killall -11 ping
--
Paul-Andrew Joseph Miseiko

On Sat, 5 Mar 2005, Rachel Llorenna wrote:

> While I fully understand that we would want to follow traditions and
> RFC specifications as much as possible, I'm not sure it's terribly
> useful to have such a high limit, when few people actually
> legitimately use channels of that length. It certainly makes making a
> MySQL table that much more difficult, since it has to be a (huge)
> VARCHAR column.
>
> It only has its minor bit of geek appeal and nothing more; I'm sure
> even Wohali wouldn't be using that channel for normal
> conversation/etc, although I do not know that for a fact. After all,
> would it not effectively reduce the length of messages, as per the 512
> character limit imposed by RFC 1459?
>
> It's as scary and useless as having excessively long (30 characters?!
> *pokes Unreal IRCd/Bahamut*) nicknames, though I suppose it doesn't
> affect ircd developers.
>
>
> On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 16:37:18 -0500, Joan Sarah Touzet <joant at ieee.org> wrote:
>> Hi Rachel,
>>
>> I think the answer is "tradition."  There's no specifically good reason,
>> and if you prefer a different limit on your network, then go for it.
>>
>> EFNet presently has a 200 character limit; do a /whois Wohali to see a
>> channel that makes use of all 200 characters.
>>
>> -Joan
>>
>> Thus spake Rachel Llorenna (rachies at gmail.com):
>>> Why exactly did the developers feel it necessary to set the channel
>>> name length limit to 200 characters, when realistically, few people
>>> exceed 20 characters for channel names (and that's being generous)?
>>> --
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Rachel Llorenna (frequency)
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Regards,
>
> Rachel Llorenna (frequency)
>
>