Send avatar in vCard

[link2xt]

vCard has a "photo" property, which allows embedded base64 images.

[Simon-Laux]

Do we send vCards at all? Would be nice for contact sharing I guess.

[link2xt]

We are not using them at all currently. I don't like current approach to avatars, mostly because when I browse message archives in Thunderbird there are avatars in some messages that are displayed as images. I think we briefly discussed changing the mime type with @r10s, but no decision was made. Now I think it makes sense to send profile as vCard (or maybe jCard https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7095), as it does not look like I am sending some random image when I write to someone not using DC with my DC client. What makes it worse is that if it is a first message, avatar is always sent.

[Simon-Laux]

that makes sense, except for base64 being always ~33% bigger in file size.

[link2xt]

that makes sense, except for base64 being always ~33% bigger in file size.

We send images in base64 anyway.

[adbenitez]

yes, sending the avatar as image to non DC users is a bit embarrassing/confusing,
+100 for this :)

[agutierrez25249]

If I totally agree, some of my contacts have removed personal images, for that reason

[link2xt]

vCard standard specifies synchronization so it also can be useful for #1064

[link2xt]

Found related XEP-0398: User Avatar to vCard-Based Avatars Conversion

[r10s]

current plan at #2232, is to put the avatar directly to the already existing Chat-User-Avatar header and move that header to the inner body part header (due to size limits in the outer message header)

if that works out, this is even less confusing to users (what is that attachment about? why is it attached only simetimes? "i sent you one attachment" - "no, you sent two!" ... ;) and also has the advantage that migration is a bit smoother as we otherwise have to ship a version that handles vcard attachtments and can ship a version that sends vcards only some time later.

might be we come back to vcard for other reasons at some point, but for the initial topic, this issue can be closed.