I would love to see more text display options included in mIRC, but I don't think adding a single control code is the method by which to do it. Rather, mIRC should begin to silently transition into accepting formatting options like most IM clients do. Not to say I love the idea of insane/rampant formatting, but I view it as inefficient to use a single control code for a single purpose without considering expandability. For example, had it been foreseen, CTRL+K could have reserved the character concatenated with # to specify a following hexadecimal color value. Now it isn't practical because of backward compatibility.
A single control code or couple of codes with expandable options is our best bet for the future. This way, older clients could ignore definitions they do not understand, but the display would not be jumbled with unreadable characters. I honestly don't have a proposition for which ASCII character should be used. Use a new one or an existing--reverse's if you like (though it does have a function, and remember: CTRL+K with 0,1 doesn't work for people with black backgrounds). Using existing ones in combination with each other is likely the best way to ensure backward compatibility.
So, for example, when CTRL+R followed by CTRL+K is found, the control code would be "activated." Once inside the control code scheme, some sort of existing formatting system could be used such as BBCode or HTML/XML. Finally, CTRL+R followed by CTRL+K (or v.v.) would be used to close the expandable control code.
Complex? Maybe. Excessive? Not really. Once the system is in place, features could be added over time. Start out with only the existing options, but this time in a format that will not be prone to backward compatability issues.
Thank you,
Jinx
