About Tripcodes...

The FAQ here is a little vague on some points:
FAQ says short word.  Must it be a word or can it be a random string?
Max length?
Case sensitive?
Forbidden characters? (I assume # is one)
Link to more in depth info?

Thanks in advance
les

>htmlspecialchars
Would it really matter, provided [a-z0-9], &, #, and ; are in the key alphabet? If anything, it would make cracking the tripcode (or finding a 'false positive' collisions, which is just as useful) a lot easier.