200 character channel name limit

[Rachel Llorenna]

You're absolutely right. So, why doesn't ircd-hybrid adopt
30-character NICKLENs by default? You could argue, I suppose, that
it'd be breaking RFC's, but limits are a bad thing, according to your
argument. However, when you propose that there should be "no such
limitations imposed on the individuals of a network" on an ideal
network, you also note that there need to be some sort of limits,
since you specify that they must be "within reason."

Obviously, since you and I are different people, "withtin reason"
means a completely differen t thing. As I mentioned, my opinion is
that a 200-character limit is too high and therefore unreasonable, but
you suggest that it is indeed within reason.

But of course, who needs nicknames at all, when a sufficiently
sophisticated client could simply convert between account id's and
user-friendly names for the user, removing the need for nicknames
completely. In fact, I believe Dianora is working on a proposal for
such an implementation. I really don't think it'd be that great to
have virtually unlimited values for everything: look at all the people
on DALnet with really_long_annoying_nicknames, etc.

And as mentioned, it does make a database technician's work slightly
more difficult.


On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 01:47:06 -0500 (EST), Paul-Andrew Joseph Miseiko
<esoteric at teardrop.ca> wrote:
> 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)
> >
> >
> 
> 


-- 
Regards,

Rachel Llorenna (frequency)