[Monotone-devel] Re: Proposal for human readable revision IDs

[Bruce Stephens]

Nathaniel Smith <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

> Err, 14 draws from a 60-letter alphabet give you only 14 * log2(60)
> = 82.7 bits.  You need 160 / log2(60) = 27.09 letters to represent a
> full SHA1... (with 61 letters you only need 26.98; since we can't
> have partial letters, this comes out to "28" and "27",
> respectively).

Sorry, I did all the calculations correctly, but for some reason had
"80" in my mind.  I guess for everyday purposes 80 bits would be good
enough.  Maybe an option for base-60 output of hashes, and allowing
base-60 input always (giving the usual responses when it's ambiguous)
would be worth trying.  It's probably as easy to remember a 2 or 3
character base-60 string as a hex string, and the base-60 string is
more specific.

[...]