Re: [9fans] hack for /usr/$user/lib/face

[Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>]

> You're right of course.  Merging the .dicts and the .machinelist is also
> not solved by binds.   I forgot to get my brain our of neutral.  Only has
> one gear anyways and that one is starting to slip.  I realized my mistake
> driving up to Boston.

Is there a reason one can't get rid of the .dict files entirely?  Why
not name the image files after the email address?  Now that we have
long file names, there shouldn't be an issue with file name size.  I
suppose the only real two issues would be matching domainnames (e.g.,
user@foo1.bar.com, user@foo2.bar.com, user@foo3.bar.com are probably
all the same person and should use the same picture, etc), and it might
be convenient to have the same picture for multiple mailboxes at
different domains (e.g., presotto@bell-labs.com and
presotto@closedmind.org are the same person).  I can't think of a
particularly good solution to that without some sort of index.  Perhaps
making filenames regular expressions or something (I don't like that,
it does away with a simple walk and turns it into a linear scan of a
big directory).

	- Dan C.