-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ok, I'm new. I've looked at the FAQ. I've done a brief scan of the mailing list archives (a search function, a-la htdig, would be a BIG help here, folks), and I'm still not seeing a clear reason why freenet needs catalogs.
What are people going to do? Download a catalog, grep the catalog for a keyword, and then submit a fetch on the keyword. There may be some people who will browse the catalog like a menu, but this will constitute a sparse minority of the total users. Freenet is getting away from the proven interface of keyword submissions; Gnutella, Napster, Google... the paradigm is one of sending out a request for keywords and getting a list of possible matches in return. The only thing hindering the implementation of a scheme like this is the combination of factors: 1) Freenet needs to have keywords be obfuscated. 2) Freenet stores keys as one long string, hashed. (1) can be maintained, but (2) is just a limitation. Freenet keys should be broken up, hashed individually, and stored as a variable-length array of hashes. EG: INSERT 1) User inserts data into the freenet. 2) The client takes the supplied key, and breaks it up based on parsing rule; IE, each word is separated by a space or a "/" 3) The client creates a 32 bit (or whatever) hash of each word, and appends them together, inserting the resulting number into the system as the key for the data. SEARCH
