Re: [Pan-users] Feature Request: "Progressive Image Loading" (GdkPixBufLoader).

[Charles Kerr]

On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 04:33:32PM +0200, Arnd Marijnissen wrote:
> 
> It would be very nice to have the inline image-display code being
> replaced/improved by using the GdkPixbufLoader facility that allows you to
> view images "while they load" (like you're used to in web-browsers, etc).
> 
> The handiness of this feature is directly apparent when browsing through
> image news-groups with large collections of images.
> Being able to identify a "beaver" picture from the kind of images you were
> looking for (or visa-versa) at an early stage is "Something Good (TM)" on
> slower connections.
> 
> Since the 0.12.0 release seems to have gone for Gtk2.0 in a big way and
> Gtk2.0 has this feature available via the GdkPixbufLoader (providing
> support for animations (gif89a, i believe ?), it should be "do-able"
> without having to write your own imaga-parsing routines from scratch.

Hi Arnd,

I don't think this would be very easy to do: inline loading works on the
web because the images are separate files, independent from the web page,
so the html can be rendered and the image can be filled in as it's
downloaded.  In Usenet the images are attached to the message itself,
and the entire message needs to be downloaded before GMime can parse it.

It's not impossible, but it's not particularly easy, either.  If someone
want this badly enough they should look at nntp.c, task-bodies.c, and
text.c and cook up & submit a patch.

cheers,
Charles