Subject: Re: Disc space and Databases

From: Philippe-Andre Prindeville <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 15:49:56 +0200

Why cant faces store all it faces in X-Face form, and then pull them
	out of a dbm database using the x@y for a key? The data is then
	treated like any X-Face line. This would seem to save a lot of disc
	space and inodes. The db search could be done after searching of
	directories in case people wanted other than 48x48x1 icons.

I'm not thrilled about the data coming back in X-Face format,
although for storage, any internal format that's efficient is fine...
when the face is retrieved, however, I think that the adaptation
layer (sorry for speaking ISOese...) should be in the server, and
should allow the (possibly naive) clients to specify format they
want the data in: raw (X-Face), ikon (48x48x1), X bitmap (xbm),
portable bitmap (pbm), etc.

This way, a toolkit function like XReadBitmapServer() could use
the data.  Better to put it in one place, than duplicate it
everywhere.

-Philip

---

From: John Mackin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 16:15:46 +1000

Philippe's message of this morning displayed a corrupted bitmap in my faces.
`Oh no,' I thought, `I'm sure Shand and I squashed all Jaa's bignum bugs.'
But it wasn't that at all; uncompface did its job and cannot be blamed.
The headers of the message are corrupt; some of what may have been body
text has been included directly after the X-Face: header, so that it
looks like continuation lines of the face.

Either the mail was sent out like that, or something damaged it.  There
is an Errors-To: header right after the bad stuff, which doesn't prove
anything either way.  Does it look like this in everyone's mailbox?  Better,
would anyone who got an _uncorrupted_ copy please let me know?  Philippe,
could you have originated the mail this way?

The bad headers follow.

John.

Organization: Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, Paris
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 15:49:56 +0200
From: Philippe-Andre Prindeville <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Subject: Re:  Disc space and Databases