[ghns] ghns status, api, etc.

[Josef Spillner]

Am Mittwoch, 24. Juni 2009 23:50:51 schrieb Frank Karlitschek:
> > That works fine for internal identification of an entry, but does
> > not work for
> > client to talk to the server about an entry unless we all three use
> > the same
> > hash function.
>
> Yes. Can´t we simply use the service provider as a "namespace"? I mean
> your unique ID would be the name of the service provider + the id you
> get from the server.

Maybe we talk about two different comparison functions here. The i18n-id 
algorithm was designed to support the detection of identical entries across 
servers despite differences in the variable parts of the meta information. Its 
usefulness comes in when people upload to several servers, for example, which 
I think will happen for those who want maximum exposure of their work. It is 
certain that all participants will have to agree on a global comparison 
function, similar to how hashing works in practice. The addition of the 
namespace leads to unique identification, but not to cross-server duplication 
detection.
If this is what is wanted, then using a unique id per server is indeed the 
better option, and the namespace can remain implicit, e.g. by grouping the 
cache files per server instead of repeating the server name for each entry.

Admittedly my approach is more difficult to implement and more academic in 
nature :-)

Josef