Add a bit of Face to XanaNews

C'mon take a little break from all that Tiburon chatter and [possibly] learn something totally irrelevant, unquestionably frivolous and undeniably trivial.

Most people are aware of X-Face, a black-and-white 48x48 image, compressed into readable text and sent along with the headers of an e-mail message or a Usenet post. The utility I've been using for this is WinFace. You could also use the Online X-Face Converter or simply select the X-Face you want to use at A bunch of X-Faces.
There's the one I've been using off to the right there.

Oh, before I forget ... if you're still a bit saving purist, in this day of age - go figure, please ... go away!  You're only going to get angry and frustrated here. I'll be promoting adding up to 750 bytes to every NG post that gets sent/downloaded. Most people over-quote more than that ... sheesh.

There is a seemingly not so well known equivalent of X-Face, referred to simply as Face, that you can add instead. The advantage of Face is that you can add a splash of colour to the image and be a little more creative - although some would argue that perfecting an X-Face, having only black and white to work with, takes a bit more talent. You be the judge, me ... I'm a bit ambivalent toward the entire argument.  I've shown the latest "Face" I'm using to the right. It's supposed to bring my trade, Marine Engineering to mind ... it does for me.

I'm only going to cover one News Reader here, but having tried quite a few of them, AFAIK there is only one ... XanaNews by Delphi guru Colin Wilson - visit Colin's Delphi Site for a lot more in excellent Delphi Utilities, Components and Applications. While Colin is on sabbatical from XN development we've been fortunate to have Leonel Togniolli [another Delphi guru] keep us up to speed with continuous releases from his site - Unofficial XanaNews NewsReader. So if you do decide to upgrade to XN that'd be the place to go. If you use another News Reader, for some odd reason, you'll have to figure how to get the Face you'll use into that program on your own.

What were we talking about ... oh yea, how to create a Face for your NG posts. That's pretty easy actually although there are a few rules you need to abide by. For the tool we're going to use, it must be in PNG format. In addition, the image cannot be greater in dimension than 48x48 and not greater in size than 725 bytes. There's all you'll need to know on The Face Header site - a must read. I use IrfanView personally, to meet these requirements but there's several other programs that can do the same. Of note, you're going to need to reduce the colour palette depth down to at least 16 in my experience -but- see what you can get away with.

Once you've acquired your 725 byte [or less] 48x48 PNG image download the PNG-To-Face utility [notice the Pascal code - all the best tools and utilities use it], extract it to the folder of choice and run it. Browse to the folder holding your file and select it ... PNG-To-Face will do the rest. If your image meets the criterion you will be presented with what looks like a lot of hieroglyphics in the right hand pane - that's your image "compressed into readable text". Copy it to the clipboard.

Now you're going to need to fire up XanaNews and decide where you're going to use your Face images. They can be added to an Account, a Group or simply to any specific message by adding to the Additional Header Data. Right-click on the Account or Newsgroup you want in the tree-view and select either Account or Newsgroup Properties from the drop-down menu. In the dialogue that comes up select Posted Message Headers in the tree. You will see an Extra Headers text-box [which, as it turns out can't be edited] there and a Modify button. Click the Modify button and on an new line [if required] in the Advanced Headers dialogue type in "Face:" [without the quotes] followed by the "compressed readable text" you copied to the clip-board from the PNG-To-Face utility. If you just want to apply the Face: to a single message, click on the Advanced button in the message dialogue and add the new Face: information on a new line in the Advanced Header dialogue.

Face:iVBORw0KGgo [... clipped a bunch ...] RU5ErkJggg==

Nothing to it, it's the telling that takes the time :)

Thanks for stopping by ...
Dave