please prefer base 64 over base 32 (was: Re: [p2p-hackers] Bitzi (was Various identifier choices))

[Zooko]

> : I guess we just differ in our value judgements here.  I value shorter ids for
> : cut-and-paste purposes more than I value absence of "break" characters.
> : Indeed, I can't really think of a motivating example for caring about "break"
> : characters.  Could you please suggest one?
> 
> command shells.  

I've been working with mojoids as part of a full time job and as an obsessive
hobby for two years now.  I've cut-and-pasted with X windows (and regretted
that double-click doesn't highlight the entire mojoid if it contains a `-'
character), I've used tab-completion to choose files whose names were mojoids,
I've written Python code and bash scripts to manipulate mojoids as strings, as
filenames, and as URLs.  I've received and transmitted mojoids via IRC, e-mail,
HTTP, and ssh.

I've also read thousands of feedback e-mails from users of my software, watched
newbies try to use the software for the first time in an "I'll watch but 
I won't help" user test on four separate occasions, convinced my mom to use it
by telling her that it was the only way to download home movies of her infant
grandchild, and used the software myself as an end user in order to publish,
share, and download files.

And in all that I've never noticed break characters or upper/lowercase to be an
issue.  But I *have* had problems with overly long mojoids being mangled by
e-mail agents and *really* long ones (> 256 characters) being rejected by MSIE.

Maybe if the binary object is only 20, 30 or 40 bytes long then expansion like
hex or base-32 is okay, but among the three issues at hand: 1.  upper-lower, 2.
break chars, 3. length, I am concerned about length because of my experiences
and because I think that the user experience is most affected by that one.

But I admit that this is just an intuition of mine.  Maybe users are fine with
slightly longer URLs, and maybe they prefer all-lowercase over mixed case URLs.
I haven't really heard a definitive statement on that from any users.

Regards,

Zooko