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An X-Face is a small
An X-Face is a small bitmap
In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap.
As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...
(48 × 48 pixels, black and white) image which is added to a Usenet
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
posting or e-mail
Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
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 James Ashton.
It is one of the outgrowths of the Vismon Vismon was the Bell Labs system which displayed authors' faces on one of their internal e-mail systems. The name was a pun on the ''sysmon'' program used at Bell to show the load on computer systems. It can also be interpreted as "visual monitor". ...
program developed at Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...
in the 1980s. While many programs support X-Face, most of them are free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
and based on Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
or its variations, such as KMail
Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...
or Sylpheed
Sylpheed is an open-source e-mail client and news client licensed under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later with the library part ''LibSylph'' under GNU LGPL-2.1-or-later. It provides easy configuration and an abundance of features. It stores mail in the MH ...
. The most common email programs though, as used in business and most domestic environments, do not handle X-Face natively, 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 Face header developed in 2005, which also allows for color images in PNG format, and can be used by the Thunderbird addon Display Contact Photo, as well as some other mail readers.
Another approach to include the sender's picture in an e-mail was used by Apple: Mail
The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...
displayed the picture if the mail included the X-Image-URL header. In 1992, this feature was originally implemented in NeXTmail, Mail.app's ancestor. X-Image-URL accepts http or (anonymous) ftp to download the picture; typical size 64x64 pixels. As of Mail v4.5, the feature is no longer supported.
See also
*iChat
iChat (previously iChat AV) is a discontinued instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It supported instant text messaging over XMPP/Jingle or OSCAR ( AIM) protocol, audio and video ...
has a similar though not compatible feature called ''picture icons''
* XBM is a general monochrome image format supported by ''xbm2xface.pl''
* FFmpeg
FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing vide ...
and Netpbm
Netpbm (formerly Pbmplus) is an open-source software, open-source package of graphics programs and a programming library. It is used primarily in Unix, where it is found in all major open-source operating system distributions, but also works on M ...
tools can create X-Face images
* Vismon Vismon was the Bell Labs system which displayed authors' faces on one of their internal e-mail systems. The name was a pun on the ''sysmon'' program used at Bell to show the load on computer systems. It can also be interpreted as "visual monitor". ...
* Brand Indicators for Message Identification
Brand Indicators for Message Identification, or BIMI (), is a specification allowing for the display of brand logos next to authenticated e-mails.
Design
There are two parts to BIMI: a method for domain owners to publish the location of their i ...
, a similar feature for brands, based on cryptographic authentication
References
External links
* - utilities and a library for converting to and from the X-Face format * {{cite web, url=http://kinzler.com/ftp/faces/index.html, title=Faces Archive, author=Steve Kinzler, author-link=Steve Kinzler, year=2005, quote=applications that can use picons and/or X-Face mail header entries, access-date=2014-01-06 Email Usenet