X-Face and depth

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

I just had scary thought -- what if we don't limit X-Faces to a single
bit plane?

I tried running a few images through various bit levels, and it's
pretty amazing how much more recognizable images are when there are
three or even two bits per pixel.  What looks totally unrecognizable
with 1 bit, looks OK with 2 bits and beautiful with 3 bits.

That's when I had that scary thought -- we don't have to limit X-Faces
to a single bit.  We can just output several X-Face headers, where
each X-Face header describes one bit plane.  Then the viewing agent
adds them all up, and displays them.  It's backwards-compatible.  :-)

However, I'm not sure this is a good idea.  Do we want to encourage
people to add even more data to the headers?  On the other hand, this
is 2002, and bandwidth and disk space is so much cheaper than it was
when X-Faces were dreamt up.  On the third hand, why not define a new
format altogether?  X-Gif-Face, or something.  Or even referring to an
outside source via HTTP.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen