UTF-8 was created in late '92, mIRC v2.1a was released early '95, and who knows how long Khaled had been working to get up to 2.1a before that. It took 10 years for most programs to really turn towards UTF-8/16 I hardly think that you can fault mIRC for not supporting it before practically anything else did.
Currently, for most of the advanced users (those who know difference between mIRC and IRC), mIRC is a curse. It's not really good when one app controls too much of the market. We have that with MSIE, which interprets the standards in its own way, and now it looks like we have same stuff with mIRC.
- MSIE and mIRC have a vitally important difference; mIRC obtained it's overwhelming majority of the IRC client market by being the best client for the users, Microsoft got the browser market for IE by slapping it in with their OS which already controlled the desktop computer market and then breaking compatability with other browsers. The same is still true today, and with that in mind if you or anyone else thinks of mIRC as a curse there's one simple thing that they can do to change that - make a better IRC client. mIRC isn't interpreting standards in it's own way here, it simply lacks support for something, if anything that could be considered a blessing for those that don't like mIRC, finally something that they can have in their clients that mIRC doesn't.
Why oh why do I have to depend on priorities in Khaled's to-do list? I'm not using mIRC, but i'm strongly tied with limitations of mIRC just because it's that popular! It's unfair! That's why I'm bashing about it. That's why people are bashing about it.
- I don't see why that is. If you want you can use UTF-8 and then if others complain you can tell them why, then if they think UTF-8 is worth having they can always change clients. If something is going to be done it's going to be done. I don't think Khaled is sitting there twiddling his thumbs wondering whether today he should put UTF-8 support into mIRC or otherwise just add a new icon to the toolbar. I don't think he lacks the basic logic it takes to see that UTF-8 is an important and useful feature to have in an IRC client, do you? Assuming you don't I hope you can understand why I don't see why people insist on 'bashing about it' as you call it, it's not going to get the job done any faster.
