codemastr:
Your point is valid...but not in dialog scripting. The exit point (whenever the message is sent to the IRC server) is the correct place to $replace() 160's with 32's and let mIRC strip off spaces like it normally does. The dialog coding does not care what you use.
I do agree that you should NOT send out any 160's whatever. If spacing is important, using something like /play which will respect internal spacing. If you need to send out a blank line in a file, simply put a bold code on that line by itself. No IRC client has a problem with that and it's unprintable.
As far as the biasing is concerned, I think the 89% is an extremely low estimation of which fonts are used in Windows itself, thus used in the dialog. Most normal users (power users aside) don't even know HOW to change their Windows fonts, much less have any inclination to change them to those few fonts that use 160 for something other than a space. Most likely, those are specialized fonts NOT used for generic Windows text-based functionality, like menu bars, titlebars, dialogs, etc.
I would conservatively estimate that 99.9% (that's only 1 person in 1000) of all Windows users would be completely unaffected by using 160's in a dialog. And the ones who WOULD be affected would likely be power users who would know what the deal was with their fonts, choosing either to use or not use that script or that font...on purpose. I would also conservatively guess that the percentage would be much higher when you figure in how many of those 99.9% actually use mIRC and run a script that would be affected.
