Forums General Discussion Something LONG overdue!!

If this was a hot item for IRC users then a killer 'IRC' app would have taken over mIRC a long time ago.

I do. A real man takes chances LOL

Ok im a backwoods hick who found some comical humour in this comment.

Original Poster:

Lets leave mIRC alone. If you want audio/video support use something that has it. mIRC has come along way in the 10 years its been around and has proven to be a popular means of communicating with one another. Just because technology changes, doesn't mean mIRC has to. It is unique and to tell you the truth, i think video/audio support sucks.

If you want to talk to someone and hear their voice, use a damn phone. If you want to see someone, go over to their house or look at a picture and talk to them while on the phone.

If mIRC follows suit with other IM's or clients, that means its not unique, but another one of those programs. Nobody wants that. I sure as hell dont. Besides, sure use of protocol may vary but I do believe there are addons out there that work with mIRC at any of the popular IRC related script sites. (yes im lazy to type in the addy, cut me some slack i just got off a 20 hour shift at work)

Who said anything about a 'hot item'? I'm sure if mIRC removed DCC CHAT very few people would notice or honestly care even if they did. DCC CHAT is no less of an 'IM feature' than audio/video support, yet I don't remember anyone getting up in arms about mIRC's continuing support for it. Why not? Because people are used to it. Or to put it another way, why are people so against audio/video support? Because they're not used to it. For some people the very idea of something radically new in mIRC seems to turn their stomaches. And that kind of stagnating attitude doesn't help anyone. I bet if it were added 90% of the people against it would stop bitching within 6 months and suddenly claim they were never really against the idea.

I'm not saying it should be added, I'm saying that the only reason that anyone is giving against it can be summed up as "I think audio/video chat is icky" without any actual reasoning behind it.

DCC is not a significant feature of IRC. It is a secondary feature supported by most or all of the well-known graphical IRC clients. It is in no way built into the protocol. The CTCP message sent to the other client to initiate a transfer is an arbitrary string which could have been anything, had the authors of IRC clients decided so.

It's also not chat-relevant, which is why I'm categorising it differently from audio/visual communication.



IRC was there first :P

Or you could read my posts which explain that mIRC is an IRC client and therefore should provide features relevant to the IRC protocol.

Then should DCC CHAT and file transfers be removed aswell? Just because mIRC is an IRC client doesn't mean it's prohibited from doing anything at all beyond that. If that truly was the case then about a third of the scripting langauge should be removed as well. Like it or not, DCC is an accepted and well-established part of IRC, and part of what's possible and in use with DCC is audio and video chat. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but I see no reason to prevent others who do want it from doing so.

How so?



Because you can already do so with other programs. There is no need to add features to mIRC that exist in other programs when it would simply serve to bloat the program to keep a minority happy.

<sarcasm>Should we also add an IRC client to Microsoft Word? Why should it not expand beyond its primary task, after all? How about an embedding graphics editing tool in Mozilla Thunderbird. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but why stop those who want to from doing so?</sarcasm>

Audio and video are related to IRC since all three methods can be used to chat.
In your examples none of the things you're saying should be added to those programs are related at all.

Video can't be used to chat. Well, unless you use sign language...

My examples were extreme, admittedly.

- DCC audio and video streaming is supported in a number of other IRC clients. This isn't in and of itself a reason to support them in mIRC, but it makes the point that they can be used (and are being used by other clients) to complement IRC just as DCC CHAT and DCC SEND/GET do. This is what you seem to be missing, these things aren't irrelevant to IRC, they go hand in hand with it. That's why it's nothing like your other 'suggestions'.

Ok, video can't be used to chat, but it certainly helps.
Would you rather meet your friends or speak to them on the phone?

Agreed.

As far as implementing audio/video support, I would like to see it added if it's useful for many people. Personally I'm in the middle: if it gets added fine, if not also fine. What I do find somewhat weird is that people instantly make the comparision to an IM client if you add a characteristic that IM clients have.

So what if mIRC would have webcam support? For me it'll still be mIRC, richer than before. Don't want to use it? Fine. Think it's a great addition? Even better. There'll have to be a lot more serious and drastic changes to mIRC before it starts looking like an IM client. I don't think it matters much how many IM related features you add to mIRC. Because those features would be implemented in an "mIRC kind of way". mIRC has its own personal touch which is unique for mIRC. Adding webcam support won't make it look more like an IM client. It'll make it look exactly like mIRC was before but with an extra new feature.

I think many people are overlooking the fact that mIRC already comes with a LOT of non-IRC related stuff. As mentioned somewhere in this thread for example the scripting language. There are literally thousands of things that the scripting language allows you to do wich are not nearly related to IRC at all. Yet you don't hear anyone complaining to limit the scripting language. In fact, looking at feature suggestions, people always want more and more features for the scripting language. How popular is the "syntax highlighter" editor request? What does that have to do with IRC? Yet many, many many people would like to see that added.

mIRC stopped being "just an IRC client" years ago, so why use the "just an IRC client" as a counter argument for future features?

Come to think of it, we all know that many new mIRC users use mIRC strictly for file sharing. Heck, many old users still do it, and it is somewhat of a plague. Looking at it, adding webcam support for example could be an incentive for new people to start using mIRC... but this time not for file sharing, but for communicating with each other, which is all in all mIRC's prime raison d'être.

Anyway, wherever it goes in the future...we'll just have to wait and see. Not saying people's opinions are wrong, or right, though in the end what a bunch of people on this forum think probably doesn't have that great deal of an influence, considering only a minuscule of mIRC's entire user base are represented here.

Yes, I'd rather meet my friends or speak to them on the phone than live with bloated webcam interfaces in mIRC.. :P

FiberOPtics: I suppose you're right in that mIRC is more than an IRC client these days. Perhaps I'm just clinging hopelessly on to the past?

I love your signature

And yes, the "good old days" phenomena is quite common in many ways in life.

Heh, thanks.

Also ironic is that I wasn't even almost aware of mIRC's existence at a time when it was "just an IRC client". I guess I'm just a sucker for idealism, or whatever the heck it comes under.

I'm also all too familiar with the problem of overbundling applications -- MS Word is widely held up as the programmers' anti-christ (well, isn't everything MS :P) in terms of how to handle feature addition. But apparently I sorely underestimated the desire/use for this particular feature.

Perhaps I didn't voice my question very well. What I meant was would you rather just speak to your friends, or see and speak to them?

I'm afraid you'll never convince me that I want a/v for myself. I was arguing about its viability/level of appropriateness to be included in mIRC at all but it seems I was wrong on that count.

To anyone (and no one in particular):

I believe there was an IRC client that had A/V support that actually worked. Anyone seen pIRCh upgraded since 1998? Better yet, has anyone seen the original homepage lately? (answer to both is no). It was obviously not popular enough to garner enough interest to keep it upgraded and in circulation. <\rant>

not to anyone in paticular....

but, there has been at least one mirc addon that addressed this issue, though i've never tested it out myself. personaly i don't see the need to try and force a revalution per say on irc, if it's meant to be it will be. BOTTOM LINE!