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[Monotone-devel] user-friendly hash formats, redux
From: |
Nathan Myers |
Subject: |
[Monotone-devel] user-friendly hash formats, redux |
Date: |
Fri, 3 Dec 2004 20:36:51 -0800 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.3.28i |
On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 06:21:33PM -0500, graydon hoare wrote:
> perhaps we just need some more tab-completion, or to print out selectors
> in more places in the UI's chatter, so people know they're valid. the
> thing is, in a distributed system you need a content-based security
> primitive like SHA1 hashes in place anyways -- since anyone can be lying
> about the thing they associate with a particular external identifier --
> so I don't feel particularly wrong about using certs-on-hashes to
> support this.
I've been thinking further about sayable, rememberable hash formats,
and have discovered something that might be practical. There are
enough three-letter words and common names to encode ten bits apiece.
This means that an SHA-1 hash expressed in hex as
15fcbe9c9f966cb320a7d4d83e55f7380f979e7d
might be expressed by Monotone, instead, as
JimBinDogHalFooLogHatJarBobLogWowManTicSawBagLet
It's a little bit longer than the hex, but not badly so. Of course
Monotone could parse it ignoring case, or enforce placement of any
caps it sees. The wordiness offers useful redundancy, too. Four
words gives you forty bits, extremely unlikely to collide, yet are
easier to recall (or say) than six hex digits that yield only 24
bits. Although the choice of formats could be a command-line or
configuration option, I don't see any real reason to retain the hex
format.
If this seems useful enough, I'll make a word list.
Nathan Myers
address@hidden
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Few remarks, (continued)
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Few remarks, Derek Scherger, 2004/12/02
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Few remarks, Nathaniel Smith, 2004/12/03
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Few remarks, Oren Ben-Kiki, 2004/12/03
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user friendly revision identifies (was: Re: few remarks), Emile Snyder, 2004/12/03
- [Monotone-devel] Re: user friendly revision identifies, graydon hoare, 2004/12/03
- [Monotone-devel] Re: user friendly revision identifies, Emile Snyder, 2004/12/03
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Few remarks, Henrik Holmboe, 2004/12/03
- [Monotone-devel] Re: Re: Few remarks, John S. Yates, Jr., 2004/12/03
- [Monotone-devel] Re: Few remarks, Bruce Stephens, 2004/12/03
- [Monotone-devel] Re: Few remarks, graydon hoare, 2004/12/03
- [Monotone-devel] user-friendly hash formats, redux,
Nathan Myers <=
- [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, graydon hoare, 2004/12/04
- [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Nathan Myers, 2004/12/04
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Nathaniel Smith, 2004/12/04
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Oren Ben-Kiki, 2004/12/04
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Nathaniel Smith, 2004/12/04
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Nathaniel Smith, 2004/12/04
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Oren Ben-Kiki, 2004/12/04
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Nathan Myers, 2004/12/04
- [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Bruce Stephens, 2004/12/04
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux, Nathan Myers, 2004/12/04