"Face" support in mail readers

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Fri, February 8, 2008 09:42, David Nicol wrote:

> with the way that gmail shows faces for people who have registered a
> face with the gmail system,
> it's kind of surprising that they haven't bothered to support X-Face
> and Face both inbound
> and outbound.

I don't agree.  Within gmail, all they do is link the address to the image
so they can pull it up for display.  This business of sending a whole
image with each message is stupid and wasteful, and I'm going to find a
way to filter or block messages that use it.

Some people actually use their email.  We're talking a few hundred
messages a day, and the storage adds up even if it's only text.  If it's a
chain of negotiation or diagnostics in a business situation, the chain
needs to be saved permanently.  Take a few dozen people in an office,
mailing images, drawings, supporting documents, require that things not be
deleted or archived for 90 days or so, and you have a real storage
problem.  Throw in a bunch of idiots using HTML messages with logos and
stationary and faces and icards and you've got a REAL headache.

Email is text.  If you want graphics, throw up a web page somewhere.