Subject: X-Face or picon support

From: [email-masked] (Kenneth J. Hendrickson)
Date: 27 Jun 1996 09:00:51 -0700

It would be really neat if elm supported the X-Face header line.  This
line contains an encoded compressed 48x48 bit image.  (Actually, it
would be nice if all mail user agents supported X-Face.  Some, including
exmh and meuf already do.)

An option should list a file from which to get the X-Face data.  If this
option is filled, the X-Face header line should be included in all sent
mail.

An option should be provided to list a program which can display the
X-Face.  Another option should be provided to control how faces are
displayed when an X-Face header line is encountered in mail being read.
Possible options might be always, never, or on-demand.  The program
should be spawned appropriately and fed the X-Face data on stdin.

Software for using and generating X-Face data is archived at
ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/index.html

A brief description of how to generate X-Face data is given at
http://www.miranova.com/~steve/xemacs-miscellaneous.html#Q5_3_10

I am not aware of any RFC that discuses any standards for the X-Face
header line, or anything similar.  If there isn't one, then perhaps one
should be written.

X-Face header lines should be of very reasonable length, because only
288 bytes would be needed even without compression.  However, X-Face
images have a bit depth of only 2; they are monochrome images.  They
don't look all that nice.  There is another standard, the picon
standard, that allows each bit to take on either one of 16 grayscale
values, or one of 32 colours.  This allows for very nice looking and
recognizable pictures.  Even this is not excessive; picons should take
less than 1.5kB, and they can be transmitted in less than 1 second on a
28.8 kB/s modem.  Any standard should support 1, 4, or 5 bits/pixel.

-- 
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~khendric/   [email-masked], [email-masked]
PGP Key Fingerprint    02 6A 4F DE DD 77 A1 8B   21 D9 81 EB ED C8 3A DC
We are upping our standards ... so up yours.     Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/5

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From: Roxanne Howard <[email-masked]>
Date: 4 Jul 1996 15:47:44 GMT

hey ok. looks like i have time after all, how are things with gordys, 
i have a lot to tell u so i know that u have the house to yourselve 
don't do anything i wouldn't do, i went tubing on saturday and on 
thursday i went to this town called ashville u would have loved it it 
had a bunch of spiritual shops and on sunday i'm going to this indian 
stuff well lots of love from:

Diana

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From: [email-masked] (Branden Robinson)
Date: 7 Jul 1996 06:33:41 GMT

In comp.mail.elm Roxanne Howard <[email-masked]> wrote:
: hey ok. looks like i have time after all, how are things with gordys, 
: i have a lot to tell u so i know that u have the house to yourselve 
: don't do anything i wouldn't do, i went tubing on saturday and on 
: thursday i went to this town called ashville u would have loved it it 
: had a bunch of spiritual shops and on sunday i'm going to this indian 
: stuff well lots of love from:

: Diana

Uh huh.

-- 
 Optimists believe we live in the best of all         | G. Branden Robinson
 worlds.  Pessimists are afraid they're right.        | [email-masked]