- X-Face
An X-Face is a small
bitmap (48 × 48 pixels, black and white) image which is added to aUsenet posting or e-mail message, typically showing a picture of the author's face. The image data is included in the posting as encoded text, and attached with an 'X-Face' header. It was devised by [http://users.rsise.anu.edu.au/~jaa/ James Ashton] . It is one of the outgrowths of theVismon program developed atBell Labs in the 1980s. Whilst many programs support X-Face, most of them areFree software and based onUnix or its variations. For exampleKMail orSylpheed . The most common email programs though, as used in business and most domestic environments, do not handle X-Face, and the information is silently ignored. Even where Unix is widely used (university and research environments), it has never been adopted to maximum potential. (for example, by searching for senders by X-Face)A further development is the " [http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/face/ Face] " header developed in 2005, which also allows for color images in PNG format, and can be used by the Thunderbird [https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/393/ MessageFaces plugin] and some other mail readers.
List of clients that support X-face
* 40tude Dialog, proprietary news reader for Windows;
*Claws Mail , GTK mail reader;
*Hogwasher , news reader for Mac OS;
*KMail , KDE mail reader, supports X-Faces since its version 1.8;
*KNode , KDE news reader;
*MacSoup , news reader for Mac OS;
*MesNews , free proprietary news reader for Windows;
* Gravity, free news reader for Windows;
* Thunderbird, with either the MessageFaces or [http://mnenhy.mozdev.org/customheaders.html Mnenhy] plugins;
* MT-Newswatcher, free news reader forMac OS ;
* Pan, A newsreader forGNOME ;
*Sylpheed , GTK mail and news reader;
* XPN, news reader written in python, pygtk;
*Xnews , free proprietary news reader for Windows.See also
*
iChat has a similar though not compatible feature called "picture icons"External links
* [http://www.dairiki.org/xface/xface.php Online X-Face Converter] - a detailed description and online generator
* [http://www.xs4all.nl/~ace/X-Faces/ X-Faces] - A collection of X-Faces
* [http://mnenhy.mozdev.org Mnenhy] - an extension that displays X-Faces for the Thunderbird Email and News client and also for theMozilla Application Suite and its successorSeaMonkey
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/compface/ compface] - utilities and a library for converting to and from the X-Face format
* [http://search.cpan.org/~cwrl/Image-XFace-0.1/XFace.pm
] - aPerl module for encoding and decoding X-Face images
* [http://www.karl-voit.at/howtos/en/xface.txt xface-HowTo] - A very short howto for creating configuration for X-Face images for the mutt Email client and theslrn News client
* [http://www.mesnews.net/gb/faq.php#faireXFace MesNews] - the news client MesNews supports X-Face by default. The image for own messages can be set up easily. [http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesnews Mesnews in FR Wiki]
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