From: Dirk Nimmich (nimmich@uni-muenster.de)
Date: Wed Nov 05 1997 - 03:46:30 CST
> > Don't set limits where they are not needed.
> Well, a limit on newsgroup names makes sense for several applications.
Almost every limit ever set in computational area has been
exceeded. Some people once thought, there will be a market for only
5 computers in the world. Some people once thought, 640 KByte RAM
will be enough for everybody. Some people once thought, file names
are no longer than 8 or 14 characters. Many programmers once
thought, their programs won't ever deal with the year 2000, and
even today there are many limits to 16, 32 or 64 bit boundaries.
Maybe this is enough *today*, but will it be enough in future?
I repeat: Don't set limits where they are not needed. They *will*
be exceeded in (near) future and you have to set a new limit or
leave it off. So you can leave it off even now (and won't be
trapped in some kind of "MS-DOS trap").
Maybe it makes sense for several applications to set a limit. There
are others for which it does not. If not now, soon. (There even has
not been any reason to limit segments of newsgroup names to 14
characters. It was only convenient for some programmers of badly
designed software.)
Think ahead!
Dirk