I truly adit, that multiple encoding support, is a great idea, and should not be left at UTF-8, even though it suports yada yada yada.
However, the idea of a petition is truly *h*t idea. Look at the government, do they take any notice?
Why the hell do you expect a software creator to include such support, from a few names?
If we are at a stage, where you think that a petition is going to do any good, why don't we all just petition to have the software made freeware.
What is most sad, is that most ople that make requests for features (and then expect god to thump the developer to force it in), don't pay for the software. Though I aint saying this is you, and it applies to all shareware, and not just mIRC.