Re: ELisp-based uncompface

[Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk>]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> writes:

> I've merged the ELisp-based uncompface program into compface.el.
> This was written by TAKAI Kousuke (`Kousuke' is his personal
> name), he is now working on the paper to assign the copyright to
> FSF.  It makes it possible to show X-Face images without the
> external uncompface and icontopbm programs or the libcompface
> library.

Excellent.

> It won't be activated for almost users but you can test it by
> setting nil to the uncompface-use-external variable if you are
> interested in it:
>
> (setq uncompface-use-external nil)

It works fine for me and it's fast enough (I guess a lot of effort was
spent on making it fast).

If no problems turn up I think the internal decoder should be the
default.  The reason is that I trust Lisp code much more than C to not
have nasty and possibly exploitable buffer overflows.


Incidentally, I was just discussing attachments and viruses in another
group, and challenged them to think of any attachment that would be
unsafe for me to open.

The only thing they could come up with until now is the temporary file
bug in x-face-el (which a. hasn't been part of Gnus, b. can't really
be used for a virus since it was only a local exploit).

But anyway, it does point to the fact that it would be unpleasant if
someone found an exploitable flaw in uncompface or icontopbm.