Hello gang,
I signed up with the listserv just a week ago and I've been watching the
discussions about the new numbering. Although, I doubt my opinion counts
for anything.. I'll give it anyway. I haven't really researched this topic
yet, so I apologize in advance if these points have already been made. So,
as the song goes: "I will dispense this advice, now:"
I do development work, and often need to come up with identifier schemas
that maximize the amount of possibilities as well as maintain a certain
level of knowing what the item refers to, without having to know its full
description.
One possibility (type based identifier): I would reserve the first
character for type of cache. Here are some examples: T=Traditional,
L=Locationless, V=Virtual, M=Multi, U=Unkown etc. Then the remainder 5
characters could be used for ID. (Of course, you could dramatically
increase the number of ID's by going with a base 31 as has been discussed.)
If we later run out of space for T(raditional) cache numbers, you can simply
assign a secondary character, say B. This would be similar how we used to
only have 1-800 numbers, but we ran out, so now the prefix could be 800,
888, etc.
Another possibility (location based identifier): Reserve the first 2
characters as location indicators: AZ, PA, TX (states) and CH, IL, DU, RU
(countries, etc.) This does however unfairly limit the number of caches
within a state or country. As we all know, AZ would probably need more
numbers than RI. ;)
Thanks,
TheWebbman
Webb Pickersgill
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