Re: [Ietf-message-headers] [art] X-Face, Face and X-Image-URL header fields

[Steve Atkins <[e-mail]>]

> On Sep 24, 2016, at 1:17 PM, Julien ÉLIE <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Couldn't the Message Headers IANA registry at <http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/message-headers.xhtml> reference the following three header fields used in mail and news messages?
> 
> * X-Face for a black & white image
> * Face for a coloured image
> * X-Image-URL for a link to an image
> 
> 
> What astonishes me is that there is not much specification about them in the Internet.  I found information in Emacs and gnus documentation, but I am unsure it is enough to be referenced in the above IANA registry:
> 
> http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/face/
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/X_002dFace.html
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/mh-e/Viewing.html
> 
> 
> Are you aware of any better specification?  

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/ftp/faces/index.html has more support for them. There might be a spec in there somewhere, but I suspect that the implementation by compface is what defines it.

> (Any Internet-Draft?)

Not that I know of, though they've been mentioned in lists of non-standard headers several times.

>  Were these header fields already discussed in an ART WG?

Not that I recall. Any discussion of them would probably touch on picons and gravatars too.

Cheers,
  Steve