Well, I've played with things quiet a bit since the last time I sent
this out.  It now can display the icons practically anywhere in any
buffer.  I have it set so that it displays them in its own (and this
is the default).  See the top of the lisp code for documentation on
its usage.  Note that there are now TWO hooks, not one like
previously.  One is for displaying the group icons, and the other is
for displaying the user/domain icons.  The code should replace gnus-picon.el 
in the .26 distribution.

Also enclosed is a patch to gnus.el, for v0.26.  It changes the names
of some of the variables to be 'picons' instead of 'picon'.  This
patch and this code will probably be in .27 or .28, assuming Lars puts
it there :-)
                                                                _____ 
Wes Hardaker                                                   / ___ \
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering             / /   \//\
University of California at Davis        __________________  \--/    /--\
Davis CA  95616                         /     Recycle!     \  \//\___/ /
(hardaker@ece.ucdavis.edu)             / It's not too late! \   \_____/