I'm attaching an almost completely untested version of
gnus-convert-image-to-gray-x-face, which shouldn't require the
presence of xbmtoikon.  Does it work for anyone else?

-- 
J. H. Palmieri                      
Dept of Mathematics, Box 354350    mailto:palmieri@math.washington.edu
University of Washington           http://www.math.washington.edu/~palmieri/
Seattle, WA 98195-4350