[sylpheed:33484] Re: [PATCH] Gravatar support

[Antonio Ospite]

On Sat, 9 Jan 2010 18:25:59 +0100
Jan Stępień <jan at stepien.cc> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've created a patch for Sylpheed 3.0.0beta4 which allows to display a
> gravatar [1] of the sender of a message instead of showing his X-Face.

Interesting, that reminds me of what gmane is doing, see:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.sylpheed.general/16112

I've tested it and it works, after disabling compface at configure-time
as the code abuses #if HAVE_LIBCOMPFACE.

> It's based on bits found in update_check.c and headerview.c. It works
> but it requires quite a lot of touch ups, for instance
> 
>   * Caching gravatars locally
>   * Enabling/disabling gravatars fetching in settings
>   * Handling a situation when a gravatar isn't available due to a 404
>   * Offline state

Could the latter be handled by downloading the image at receiving-time
(we are very likely online at that time), and providing a bulk
operation to get/refresh images for old mails? Trying a connection on
each headerview rendering looks sub-optimal.

>   * Portability
> 
> Please let me know what do you think about it. Do you find it useful?
>

Nifty, for sure.

I know that this patch is just to "test the water" (to see if there is
any chance this is going to be integrated) before you put more effort
into a final implementation, but I am writing my opinions anyway:
  - What about using libcurl directly instead of spawning a separate
    process?
  - What about showing both the X-Face and the gravatar like gmane does?
    X-Face users are usually advanced users who took good care of
    setting up their extra header, don't ignore them. Alternatively I'd
    say to rely on gravatar only when X-Face is missing; as I said if
    someone set up a X-Face, they want to have it shown anyways :)
  - When using images with transparency, the problem I described
    here: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.sylpheed.general/16081
    is even more evident, try to trigger it by resizing your window or
    sending a mail with a very long recipient list, and comment there,
    please.

> Remember to run autogen.sh after applying the patch.
> 
> [1] http://gravatar.com/
> 
> Best regards,
> -- 
> Jan Stępień <jan at stepien.cc>
> 

Ciao,
   Antonio

-- 
Antonio Ospite
http://ao2.it

PGP public key ID: 0x4553B001

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
   See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
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