As you probably already know...
Faces is a program for monitoring a list visually. Typically this is a list
of incoming mail messages, jobs in the print queue or users on a system.
Faces has the ability to read compressed faces images embedded in your
mail headers, uncompressing them and displaying them on-the-fly. There are
graphical interfaces for X11, XView, SunView and NeWS.
This mailing list is to:
- generate new patches for faces with a faster turnaround then is generally
appreciated on the net.
- check that faces is portable, and correctly runs on a variety on Unix
machines.
- solicit help from other people in fixing the bugs, and implementing the
suggestions for enhancements that are listed in the TODO file.
- promote discussion on faces; suggestions on how to implement new features,
tricks used in running faces or in setting it up. To actively share faces
expertise.
------
The address of the mailing list is:
faces@Aus.Sun.COM
This should be equivalent to:
faces@sunaus.sun.oz.au
but the first address is prefered, and should be much faster.
Should you have any administrative problems with the mailing list, then the
proper address to send them to is:
faces-request@Aus.Sun.COM -or- faces-request@sunaus.sun.oz.au
although mailing them direct to me will probably work.
I've also set it up so that messages sent to the mailing list are archived.
How to make those archives subsequently available is another question, which
I'll deal with at a later date (when there is sufficient material archived).
There are currently seventeen names on the alias, plus one exploder, plus the
archive entry.
---------
As a start to finding out exactly where faces is currently at, I've just gone
through my faces mail folder, and added in all the bugs, suggestions, fixes
and enhancements I'd received, which weren't already in the TODO file. These
are listed below, and will be officially included with the TODO file in the
next patch.
If your favorite problem/suggestion isn't on this list, please let me know
and I'll add it. Apologies if I've inadvertently omitted any. The TODO file
is now almost double the size.
---------
I will be going overseas for seven weeks on April 7th. Before then I'd like
to get out one more patch. I'd also like to allow two or three days after
that, just in case I have to send out a fixup patch for anything I may have
broken in that patch.
Rich Burridge, DOMAIN: richb@Aus.Sun.COM
Sun Microsystems. ACSNET: richb@sunaus.sun.oz
PHONE: +61 2 911 4212 UUCP: {uunet,mcvax,ukc}!munnari!sunaus.oz!richb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
New TODO entries:
* From John Buckle <johnb@cs.su.oz.au>
With faces v1.4, I've been having trouble in sorting out my faces
directory path. On the old version (v1.3) I used -f .faces, this meant
that my directory was searched last which also meant that my misc. face
was used. Using FACEPATH I haven't been able to do this, it either seems
to use one directory or the other, but not both.
FACEPATH=:.faces - uses /n/faces/misc. for things stored .faces
FACEPATH=.faces: - uses my misc. for things in /n/face
Further comment from John Mackin <mackin@vast.eecs.unsw.oz.au>
This effectively means that under 1.4, you cannot have your own
misc./unknown icons. The first directory in the FACEPATH to contain a
misc./unknown icon will be the last directory searched; any directories
after that will be silently ignored. An unfortunate sude-effect of the
make_iconname() routine.
* From Amir J. Katz <uunet!sn4idc8!amirk@munnari.oz.au>
I think that it should be mentioned in the faces man page that every
xterm started under X will show on 'xfaces -h localhost' as a new user,
unless you start xterm with the '-ut' option. I know it's an RTFM issue
but xterm man page is so looooong, so I am sure most people fall asleep
long before they reach the '-ut' option...
* From Lindsay F. Marshall <Lindsay.Marshall@newcastle.ac.uk>
With the X11 version under twm, there is a notitle white line problem.
Also seen under Open Windows. This shows up as a thick white line along
the bottom of my faces window. The white bar at the bottom is exactly
twm title sized......
* From Lindsay F. Marshall <Lindsay.Marshall@newcastle.ac.uk>
The button1clear bug is weird - you click button1, nothing happens
until you click button two!!
* From Eric Negaard <negaard@aerospace.aero.org>
I have been working on a user program for use with faces (to display
mail in a POP mailbox) and I noticed what I think is a bug. The code
in do_prog does not update the icon image, so the faces icon always
displays the NOMAIL icon.
My fix was to change the
add_face(DISP_BOTH, ...)
to
add_face(DISP_ALL, ...).
* From John B. Melby <melby@daffy.yk.fujitsu.co.jp>
If one creates a directory "edu" in the faces directory, it does not
have any effect on a domain address in which EDU is capitalized.
It seems to me that "faces" should not pay any attention to the case
of a domain name (since case is only supposed to be significant in the
user name).
From John Mackin <mackin@vast.eecs.unsw.oz.au>
The comparison when looking up the domain in the faces
directory appears to be case-sensitive. This is wrong per
RFC822, domain-parts are case-insensitive. Both the directory
name and the host name from the mail item should be downcased
before comparison.
From Peter Gray <pdg@draci.cs.uow.oz.au>
When comparing the domain of the mail with the machine.tab entries
strcasecmp should be used since mail addresses are case invarient.
* From John Mackin <mackin@vast.eecs.unsw.oz.au>
If you have a machine.tab entry in an earlier directory in
FACEPATH instead of a symlink, further directories down the
FACEPATH are not searched.
* From John Mackin <mackin@vast.eecs.unsw.oz.au>
With faces v1.4.13, I am having a repeatable problem with faces starting
up with the window being all white. Then if I give it a toggle button
(e.g.) it draws what it should contain.
* From Mike Bolotski <misha@ai.mit.edu>
We've made (and are planning to make more) changes to the faces package.
Some changes:
- add flag to allow faces to be compiled to always run -U.
- added EXCLUDE_UPDATE_DOMAIN so that mail from local users does not
result in continuous updates
- fixed icon2ikon to understand the icon format as output by the PBM
package (no leading 0x)
- fixed icon2ikon to extract the center 48 pixels instead of just the top
48.
Planned changes:
- change the basic data structure to either a hash table or a balanced
tree
- automatic clearing of old faces once the mail has been read (does
that exist already?)
- hooks to emacs (RMAIL and VM) to allow automatic X-Face inclusion)
- lots more, since several students at the AI Lab are fascinated
by the package.
* Include mention of Steve Kinzlers' anon ftp service for the faces database
in the README file.
* Mention the faces mailing list in the README file.
* Include Steve Kinzlers' scripts and filters in the generic faces
distribution. These include:
ikon2xbm, xbm2ikon bitmaps filters for Blit ikon and X11 bitmaps
lpqall.sh, lpqall customized "faces -e" script for monitoring all
printers
mailq customized "faces -e" script for monitoring the
system sendmail queue
* From Philip Gladstone <philip@bigben.dle.dg.com>
In the top level Makefile, you allow specification of FMONTYPE.
The code in main.c checks for FBMONTYPE. Also the definition of
FMONTYPE=0 and =1 are reversed.
* From Jim Rees <rees@citi.umich.edu>
It would be nice if the compression and uncompression routines were
separated into different source files, so that if I want to include just
the uncompression in my mailer, I don't have to include the compression
stuff too.
* From Ian Darwin <ian@sq.com>
Need to do a version of faces for tNt v2.0.
* Better handling of the number of characters to use for display the text on
the faces icons, especially with variable width fonts.
* From Chris Steinbroner <hesh@lll-crg.llnl.gov>
From Philip Colmer <pcolmer@acorn.co.uk>
Loading xfaces fails because XSetWMProtocols() does not exist on my system.
It's an X11R4 routine.
* From Sam Drake <DRAKE@IBM.COM>
Set of diffs to get the X11 version of faces working on the
RISC System/6000 under AIX 3.1. Both mail and logon monitoring
work; I haven't tried print queue monitoring yet.
* From Michael Schmidt <michael@uni-paderborn.de>
With NIS (YP domain fb17i, mail domain uni-paderborn.de) I want to put
a line "fb17i=uni-paderborn.de" in the machine.tab, so that for all
hosts in the YP domain faces are looked up under their mail domain.
[Set of diffs included].
* From Ken Wood <kwood@adl.austek.oz.au>
Details of how to generate X-Face: headers from within GNU Emacs. Needs
to be added to the README file.
* From Lindsay F. Marshall <Lindsay.Marshall@newcastle.ac.uk>
Would it be possible to have a define (or option) that allowed us to
set the X title/name attributes. I want the program to be called "Faces"
in my twm iconManager and it is currently called "faces". I haven't
found any way of changing it other than by hacking the code.
* From Lindsay F. Marshall <Lindsay.Marshall@newcastle.ac.uk>
Some suggestions:
- people.tab/machine.tab per face database
- caching of icons to reduce file accesses
- re-reading people.tab/machine.tab when modified
- access to gnu finger (face) service
THE END.