9.5 Inserting Your Picture

You can insert your picture in the header of your mail message so that recipients see your face in the ‘From:’ header field if their mail user agent is sophisticated enough. In MH-E, this is done by placing your image in the file named by the option mh-x-face-file which is ~/.face by default.

If the file starts with either of the strings ‘X-Face:’, ‘Face:’ or ‘X-Image-URL:’ then the contents are added to the message header verbatim. Otherwise it is assumed that the file contains the value of the ‘X-Face:’ header field.

The ‘X-Face:’ header field, which is a low-resolution, black and white image, can be generated using the compface command. The Online X-Face Converter is a useful resource for quick conversion of images into ‘X-Face:’ header fields.

Use the make-face script to convert a JPEG image to the higher resolution, color, ‘Face:’ header field.

The URL of any image can be used for the ‘X-Image-URL:’ field and no processing of the image is required.

To prevent the setting of any of these header fields, either set mh-x-face-file to nil, or simply ensure that the file defined by this option doesn’t exist.

See Viewing, to see how these header fields are displayed in MH-E.