Before I explain this feature suggestion I would first like to explain its purpose. I have read many posts on these forums regarding mIRC bots and such.
Now I know that mIRC wasn't designed or intended to be a bot platform which can rival the veteran eggdrops or other bot-only IRC programs but even those anti-mIRC bot eggdrop/TCL bible thumping people have to agree that in all aspects a properly scripted mIRC bot can not be identified apart from an eggdrop or similar. One comparison that has stuck in my mind, which I personally disagree with, is trying to use a kitchen sink (mIRC) as a refrigerator (bot-only IRC program).
It can do all the same things and IMO it is much easier to do some things with it. Some of these kitchen sink bot services have been running for upwards of 3 years and have done fine from what I gather, we have been running for many months - nearly a year and everything is going great. mIRC may not be as fast depending on proc speed/ram or scripting techniques but it can do it all. Aside from all this there are only a few limitations of mIRC, most of which can be solved by rethinking the way of doing what it is you are trying to do... except one.
Since the popularity of this choice of bot is increasing according to a few articles I have recently read on top of hosting a large service of my own, the occurrence of the "Error creating Window" message has become or will soon become a significant problem for my kind. I have seen the post here regarding the "Error creating window" and I have also read posts about separate versions (bot/stripped down versions) of mIRC. I don't think that creating another flavor of mIRC would be in the best interests of our beloved developer(s) or those that script mIRC.
I would be ecstatic about a solution to the "error creating window" problem. Programming wise I understand that this is not something that mIRC or ANY other Windows application can get around because the 200 window limit as described to me and experienced by myself and others is by all means a limitation of the Windows operating system (at least 2k advanced server and XP pro which my group has personally tested on). So back to the topic of this thread... would it be possible for all of our easy operators (ison, isop, isvoice etc.) and identifiers ($comchan, $nick(#chan,N,ohvr), etc.) to still function normally if there was an feature similar to that of the single query message window that would compound all channels for that server connection into one single channel window or no channel window at all?
Maybe if there had to be a window for some of the operators and identifiers to work that the single channel window could almost work ... maybe listing the nicknames in it would have to be a little different and might as well just not be shown at all so that there could be a sort of single channel window protocol for the nicklist. I also read a post here regarding the maximum string length which I also think to be rather important even though I have managed to work around that limit in many ways. This feature would help my service and great services like ours prove to others that on top of being the most popular client, mIRC's scripting language and features are fantastically robust enough to be client/bot, which is something it's becoming increasingly popular for.
