My opinion. There are dlls and scripts that enable the use of custom emoticons quit being lazy and find/or script one if thats what you want. Do a little searching for these addons.
Why not ask for protections, sockbots, or any other script to be put into the codebase ^_^ see my point?
mIRC is by far one of the most powerful/and useful programs on my pc theres not much you can't get mIRC todo beyond chats and in chats so Kudo's to Khaled for the many years of such a great program ive enjoy'd it the 10 years ive been online so thanks =)
But i agree if emoticons are implemented they should most definately be optional switches and should be able to customize these
