Sorry to bump this thread - I got pointed here by the sticky thread on the front page.
I'm also a purist who believes text is text. I use plain text in e-mail whenever possible, don't like graphics intensive web sites, and disable graphical smileys in my IM clients. I would therefore never ever enable such a feature in mIRC (I use good ol' Merlin because I'm visually impaired and he helps me by reading the text out loud). However, I have no problem with people who would enable it themselves - personal choice. But please do not put in in the main installer!!
If you bload the main exe file by 3 meg, you'll likely bloat the installer package (Which I have to download) by up to 3 meg as well - especially if you're going to include default bmp or gif files as well. An extra 3 meg will eat into my usage cap on ADSL, and/or take extra time to download on my dial-up line - which costs money.
You people in the states who all have super-fast uncapped DSL/Cable connections seem to forget what it's like in a third world country where one way or the other you pay for every bit you download.
Cheers
Grakul
