X-Face/Face Window

"X-Face:" is an extension to the article header of Usenet posts that encodes a small 48x48 monochrome bitmap. The bitmap is shown when the article is read, and can contain anything you can fit in a 48x48 1 bit bitmap.

"Face:" is a different extension to the article header. Face uses BASE64 to encode a 48x48 PNG image. The PNG image can contain contain any color depth as long as the image is less than 725 bytes compressed. The magic number 725 is used so that the resulting base64 encoded image in the header is less than 998 characters, which is a limit imposed by some news & mail servers. See http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/face/.

In order for the Face image to be displayed, your computer must have the Microsoft dll "GDIPLUS.DLL" installed in the folder where WinVN is located, or somewhere on the Windows search path. This dll is included with Windows XP and higher, for older 32bit operating systems, look for Microsoft's free PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to get a compatible gdiplus.dll

Currently only one X-Face or Face is shown at a time. If there are multiple images in the article, only the last one is shown.

Adding your own X-Face image to you posts

In order to supply your own X-Face: or Face: header in WinVn, you can specify whether you want the header to apply to a specific group, or to any group at the host.

To specify a particular group, find or create the group section in the WinVN.ini file using the format:

[G: newsgroup.name]
AddHdr01=P--- X-Face: <xface data>
...
AddHdr99=

To specify a header to apply on all groups, find the newsserver section on the WinVn.ini file based on the name used to connect in the communications options dialog.

    [N: newsservername.in.comm.dialog]
    AddHdr01=P--- X-Face: <xface data>
    ...
    AddHdr99=

You can specify up to 99(!) additional headers. The format for the entries is:
AddHdrxx=[PMCF]<Space><Your header>

Where 'xx' is a digit starting at 01 through 99, [PMCF] determines what kind of message the header will be applied to. If if does not apply replace the character with '-'.
The characters map to the following types of messages generated in WinVn:
P=POST, M=MAIL, C=CANCEL, F=FORWARD or '-' to specify not needed

Example:
AddHdr01=P--- X-Face: some-long-string-of-data

Means only append this header to Posts, not mail, cancel, or forwards.

For example:
[N: news.giganews.com]
AddHdr01=P-C- X-Face: *@|:n8>k-x@S+<.3oc60nm/',~0MFfp/s+HF\*rAWf2j@Q3s]z=zjC*OX/2Y7KIlCa8JJ"yeKp~f(nK"o".;7<GEm\Zr+4

To create your own XFace try the program "WinFace" at http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/