This is mainly a technical bug report for Khaled. Others are welcome to comment and discuss too.
Before I get started, I want to rule out the following possibilities (which are usually what people resort to blaming for problems of this nature):
- This is not caused by video card issues or driver issues. The problem is reproducible on multiple systems, both ATI and nVidia-based, using completely different cards.
- The issue has only been confirmed under Windows XP (32-bit; I don't have a way to test 64-bit, and I don't use Windows 7).
- I *do not* have East Asian Languages enabled (
see my blog for why I mention this).
- No GDI hacks or "theme hacks" are in place; everything is 100% stock/standard.
- The issue is only visible (from my testing) when full window drag is enabled (which is usually the default).
The problem appears to be that mIRC is incorrectly handling WM_PAINT messages directed to it when another application/program window is dragged across the main mIRC window. The application/program window being dragged doesn't matter -- it can be anything (Firefox, Notepad, PuTTY, etc.).
The result are occasional glitches (grey lines, boxes, and sometimes window content) which are visible only within the mIRC application.
I've attached a screen shot showing what the problem is. I can also make a video demonstrating this problem if it would be of more help.
http://www.malkavian.com/~jdc/mirc_wm_paint_bug.pngThe background colour (dark grey) seen in the screen shot is the "Application Background" colour per the Windows Classic UI theme I use (called Rainy Day). The vertical white-grey line seen is the leftovers of the left edge of the Firefox window I dragged over mIRC.
There are some well-established threads about this problem, most of which stem from the WM_PAINT handler in the application incorrectly returning non-zero to Windows. Here's some reference material:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd145213%28v=vs.85%29.aspxhttp://winapi.freetechsecrets.com/win32/WIN32WMPAINT.htmSimilar issue:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=522970I'm more than happy to try out debug builds that may or may not fix this problem. Just let me know.
