Subject: Making the picons database distributed

From: "T.J.A. Thurman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 19:05:40 +0100 (BST)

Just an idea I was turning over and wondered what people thought...

It could be worthwhile to store (parts of) the picons DB in some
distributed format. Remember that many years ago the Internet's host names
table was stored in a standard text file, which grew into the distributed
DNS we have now? Similarly, it might be useful to have the option of
keeping picons for a particular site on a machine at that site.

The WWW may as well be harnessed to do this. The picon for the user 
[email-masked] could be stored, for example, at
	http://www.bar.com/0picons/users/com/bar/foo/face.gif
and the "unknown" picon for the same domain would then be found at
	http://www.bar.com/0picons/domains/com/bar/unknown/face.gif

Note:
1. I suggested "0picons" because that name is unlikely to be used anywhere
   else ("picons" could be a directory discussing picons as a subject, for
   example).
2. The reduplication of the address in the URL allows sites which already
   have a picons database merely to symlink "0picons" to /usr/lib/picons.
   (Such a site could, of course, also be used as a local mirror of the
   whole database for local machines.)
3. It might be more sensible to remove the "users"/"domains" part of the
   address. However, this may conflict with the symlink benefits mentioned
   above.
4. Naming the host "www" would save trouble in setting up. It would have 
   been elegant to standardise on a name such as "picons", but this might
   delay acceptance.
5. Of the three formats widely used for picons, it may be best to
   standardise on GIF for these purposes. Only GIF and XPM can subsume
   the other two, and XPM is not widely supported by browsers (AFAIK).

I'd suggest the order of looking for a picon would then be as follows:
	1. check local databases, as discussed in the Picons FAQ
	2. check the local site, as above
	3. check the Picons Search Engine.

Naturally, this sort of thing needs to exist in widely available mailers
in order to gain widespread acceptance. The availability of the source for
Netscape, and mozilla.org's acceptance of improvements, provides an
interesting opportunity for this.

Any thoughts?

Thomas

Thomas Thurman, Sidney Sussex College, | Any attempt to brew coffee with a
Cambridge. CB2 3HU  |  [email-masked] | teapot should result in the error
http://www.sid.cam.ac.uk/~tjat2/ | ><> | code "418 I'm a teapot". --RFC2324

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From: Kristian Ellingsen <[email-masked]>
Date: 05 Sep 1998 14:32:18 +0200

* T. J. A. Thurman

| Naturally, this sort of thing needs to exist in widely available mailers
| in order to gain widespread acceptance. 

Yes, I agree. If the 'faces feature' is added to Microsoft Internet
Explorer, 'cs.indiana.edu' will be overloaded, and a distributed system
would be preferable. 

One should have thought that 'faces' support would have been added to
MS-IE and NS-Navigator ages ago, have anybody in the 'faces team' tried
to talk to them? After all, faces makes Usenet a more enjoyable place.
-- 
KRISTIAN ELLINGSEN, +47 905 13 552
http://ellingsen.home.ml.org/
mailto:[email-masked]
/\..Life is difficult because it is non-linear../\

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From: "David May, at a FreeBSD 2.2.6 site, somewhere in the Outback" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 06 Sep 1998 14:39:47 +0800

I am glad you said this and I entirely agree.  The Internet has become too 
serious in recent times. Faces do make it more enjoyable (and that is one 
reason why I use the exmh mail agent).It would be nice if faces were more 
widely supported.

I downloaded the entire faces database a few years ago. That was a rather 
large amount of data to FTP. It occupies a sizeable chunk of disk space too. 
The database gets more out of date each day as there does not seem to be a 
convenient way for me to keep it current.

It would be nice to be able to get updates to the picons database from 
time-to-time, e.g. via mailing list or CVSUP. Even better, would be the 
ability to retrieve faces in the same way that PGP public keys can be retrieve 
as needed from public online databases via HTTP protocol, or via finger 
protocol from a .plan file.

-- 
David May            |  mailto:[email-masked]   | Finger for
                     |  finger:[email-masked]   | PGP Public Key
                     |  http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~mayd  | 

``We are so used to thinking in terms of the `progress' of science that 
it is hard for us to remember that certain matters were better understood 
one hundred years ago.''
                                       Robert Hermann, in introduction to
              Felix Klein, Development of Mathematics in the 19th Century.

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From: Daniel Glazman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1998 09:30:54 +0100

T.J.A. Thurman wrote:
> distributed format.

The opportunity and feasability of this idea has already been discussed
in 1992. I remember that some of us (including myself) faced a barrage
fire from the IETF saying :

	we will never accept that because 1) faces are ugly b) it will
	slow down MUAs c) it will considerably increase traffic d) do
	you really think I want to see the face of the neird who sent
	me a mail yesterday ?-)

points a and d are just stupid. I have been using my own faces-enabled MUA
during 5 years and nothing is more visual than a face or a logo.

points b and c are a real concern.

I have developed in 1991, as part of the Meuf package, a daemon based on
the finger daemon able to answer a picon to a request on a given port.

A call issued by a MUA, on user's request, is for me an implementable
solution. An automatic retrieval of faces for all incoming messages
is IMHO a bandwidth murder.

</Daniel>

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From: John Kodis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 20:36:11 -0400

> to talk to them? After all, faces makes Usenet a more enjoyable place.

Now that Netscape has released the source code for Mozilla, all that
is required is a sufficently skilled and motivated hacker with a
little spare time on his hands.