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From: Jacob_Palme_QZ%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Checksum as a replacement for missing Message-ID.
Message-ID: <9090@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 8-Mar-85 22:50:32 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.9090
Posted: Fri Mar  8 22:50:32 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 06:44:53 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 19

The reason I choose not to treat the date field as a string,
is that the checksum should not change if the date field is
translated from one format to another, e.g. from the format
in RFC822 to the format in X.400.

This of course requires that the date field is parseable. But
every single message should, when you get it, have a header
in one given standard and thus date fields not belonging to this
standard should not occur.

One problem is the time zone. Since the format of this seems
to be often wrong, I did not include it in the checksum. This
means that if the time is translated to another time zone,
e.g. if the date "25 Feb 85 15:01 EST" is translated by some
agent handling the message into "25 Feb 85 12:01 PST" then the
algorithm will create a different checksum.

Question: Would such translations of dates by message handling
agents be expected to occur?