Re: Disc space and Databases

Philippe-Andre Prindeville (philipp@inf.enst.fr)
Wed, 10 Apr 91 15:49:56 +0200

Why cant faces store all it faces in X-Face form, and then pull them
out of a dbm database using the x@y for a key? The data is then
treated like any X-Face line. This would seem to save a lot of disc
space and inodes. The db search could be done after searching of
directories in case people wanted other than 48x48x1 icons.

I'm not thrilled about the data coming back in X-Face format,
although for storage, any internal format that's efficient is fine...
when the face is retrieved, however, I think that the adaptation
layer (sorry for speaking ISOese...) should be in the server, and
should allow the (possibly naive) clients to specify format they
want the data in: raw (X-Face), ikon (48x48x1), X bitmap (xbm),
portable bitmap (pbm), etc.

This way, a toolkit function like XReadBitmapServer() could use
the data. Better to put it in one place, than duplicate it
everywhere.

-Philip