Forums General Discussion Something LONG overdue!!

- It's nothing to do with a revaluation of IRC, it's simply support for features of DCC that are complementary to IRC. It doesn't change what IRC is one bit. If it's meant to be, it won't just be. The code won't just fall out of the sky, someone has to develop and maintain and improve such a feature for it to be useful.

Yeah. I'm sure the development of pIRCh being stopped was solely down to it's support for a/v chat...

Honestly I don't have a clue why it was stopped, it could've been one of a thousand things, but in it's day it was one of the more popular Windows clients so I very much doubt it was anything at all to do with lack of support. Even if it was, and even if that lack of support was down to the quality of the program/features, it would've been because it's actual IRC experience wasn't good enough. No-one wouldn't use a client because it supported a/v chat if it's other features were up to scratch. There's also the very important note to make that this isn't 1998. There have been vast improvements in the quality and compression of audio and video, and that combined with the massive expansion of broadband means the number of people with connections that can actually handle real-time streaming a/v is about 100x greater than it was 7 years ago.

Actually, the development of pirch was stopped (according to the author) because of the lack of "shareware" payments to the author, and the lack of available scripts to enhance the "filesharing experience".
My point was that not even A/V support (which DID work, even without broadband) could get the cheap bas****s to send in their $10-$20 to keep the author updating his product.

wow, I didn't think he was all that interested in making scripting available... I did not use pIRCh myself (I tried it once, but I didn't inhale... HONEST!) . In fact I remeber making "PILs" was considered difficult and few pIRCh users knew how, (maybe documentation wasn't good?).
I know some who still use pIRCh and to them scripting (and mIRC's abilities) are of no interest to them as they do not see that as part of the "chatting" experiance.
There was also a network, ummm talkcity I think it was, that at one point blocked all users who did not use pIRCh... there was a big deal about that for a while and afterward many changed to mIRC or just quit using IRC entirely.

Honestly A/V was not a big deal to them, in fact I recall more conversations about them trading ICQ numbers (and problems they had with ICQ) than anything. In fact I don't remember them discussing A/V at all.

Until the win XP SP2, netmeeting was a good program for A/V as long as you didn't use the MS servers and made your connection by IP address (DCC basicly) now Bill wants you to pay for the software and connect over his servers... (Bill doesn't play well with others I guess).

My take on the whole thing is that A/V would not enhance chatting on IRC as using them would preclude talking in channel. More so that msg, query and DCC chat do now. On top of that the mIRC.exe would be well over twice as big as it is now and one thing that has always impressed me with mIRC is that even as more enhancements have been added, mIRC has not "bloated", remaining around 1mb download.

Lastly having the A/V added to mIRC would only contribute to lag (try maxing out your DCC sends and see what happens).

- Why is that? For one thing they wouldn't replace channels because it'd be a client-to-client connection. Also, as I mentioned earlier in the thread many things are just easier to communicate with text. If anything were going to replace (private) chatting over IRC directly it'd be DCC CHAT as it does the same thing without the need for the server. Yet nobody seems to take issue with DCC CHAT and, more to the point, it hasn't replaced chatting over IRC by any stretch of the imagination - it's simply provided an alternate way of communicating.


- Wow. Where can I pick up a crystal ball like yours? I assume that must be what you used to tell how A/V support would affect mIRC's file size...


- Not significantly. Any broadband connection could quite easily facilitate A/V streaming - a couple of connections at least would be possible. It's totally different from 'maxing out your DCC sends' as when you do that you're a) using many many connections and b) a file transfer will take as much bandwidth as it possibly can in order to send/receive the file as fast as possible, whereas an A/V stream would only use a fixed amount of bandwidth.

True, but the sad fact is very few things will part people from their money if they feel they don't need to. If A/V support did that it wouldn't just make it a good feature, it'd make it the Holy bloody Grail of software development. :tongue:

I have no idea what the ratio is broadband vs dialup, but you are making an assumption aren't you? Or is it your take that only people with broadband would benefit from this feature?

thats exactly what he is saying and that very well maybe true.?? in any case to elaborate on my last statement... i meant that if the developers saw fit to add it they would. (oh and yes, i always beleived that code just ploped out of nowhere. and you tell me it doesn't!!!!...man you busted my
bubble starbucks )


agreed on that one!

LOVELORD, you expecting Khaled who has been no doubt the most laziest, programmer ever to put sound and video, heckI have seen no changes to this program since 2001, only the fact that now they ask for money..

And I dont know any other program that exists for windows xp that looks like windows 3.1.. get with the times khaled and stop being lazy.

mirc doesnt look like win 3.1 prog...
mirc is done with DEFAULT Windows GUI, its up to WINDOWS how to SHOW it...

if you preffer childish colorfull baby program then use MSN, coz it fits YOU

You assume an awful lot. I wouldn't want audio nor video added to mIRC, for I feel it would lessen program as a strong 'scriptable' text chatting client. If you want audio & video programs there are plenty around, but none of those offers the strength in ability for the individual user to program the client to their needs.

Just because something 'could' happen, doesn't mean it should, nor will happen.

My personal desire would be to eliminate DCC altogether from IRC, for that's what has/is ruining what IRC was.

well, just because mirc isn't the way you would like it to be, doesn't make khaled or anyone else lazy!. he has held strong and haven't sold out how he believes mirc should be. and after all these years his way seems to be working, don't ya think?!

ok i'm all for development and progress and whatnot but, why would you want mirc to become a AIM, or yahoo type clone anyways??? thats how i perceive, how some are trying to convince us, on how mirc should go..???? they say no, however thats where we would be.. it's because mirc is the way it is now that makes it great! it's making users use their minds to come up with creative NEW ways to do the job. and thats what its all about imo....

Quote:

My personal desire would be to eliminate DCC altogether from IRC, for that's what has/is ruining what IRC was.

Oh please, that has to be the lamest line of garbage I've
read in a long, long time. What is ruining IRC is all the punk
packet kiddies who are nothing but a bunch of little hacker
wannabe's that have nothing better to do with their pathetic
little lives than to make other IRC lives miserable.
DCC has nothing to do with any ruination of IRC. Some people
may use it for illegal purposes, but so what, does that mean
everyone uses DCC the same way so it should be removed?
Of course not. I have to ask why you believe legitimate users
of DCC should be denied it only because a few misuse it? The
way I see it is, if DCC is ruining your personal IRC
experience, it's only because you're letting it. If that is the case
then just stay away from file sharing channels. If someone
asks for your assistance with file transfers, ignore them.
Maybe petition your network to ban file sharing channels?
Don't blame DCC for the way some use it. There
are still legitimate users of DCC and you can safely bet your
last dollar that if there is a way to abuse/misuse any
technology on this planet, there will be a line of people waiting
to do exactly that.

But it's not some users. It's a lot more than "some". And yes, the way many use DCC is ruining what IRC used to be.

Let's not digress into an unrelated discussion though

Regards,

hah, she introduced it, not me.

~ Edit ~

Quote:

And yes, the way many use DCC is ruining what IRC used to be.

Well, the addition of Audio/Video chat would ruin
what IRC used to be for me, and many others.

Well, the addition of Skins would ruin
what IRC used to be for me, and many others.

Well, the addition of Smileys would ruin
what IRC used to be for me, and many others.

Well, the addition of Avatars would ruin
what IRC used to be for me, and many others.

- Multi-server capability, a major change to the program was added in 2002.



- mIRC has been shareware since it's first release. Not very observant are you?



- The classic line of someone who's never actually had to use Windows 3.1. If you had you'd know full-well that mIRC looks nothing like it.

That 0 for 3 - if you're gonna insult someone you really should check if your three 'facts' to back it up are even remotely true. I guess you couldn't be bothered. Now who's lazy?

Actually the most up to date versions of Microsoft's common controls library look a lot fresher than any of mIRC's controls -- and that's ignoring the fact that many or most of them are proprietary anyway.

mIRC *could* use a facelift. I recognise that there are people who prefer terminal-style interfaces, and yet those who prefer a GUI to be, well, graphical. mIRC seems to be in between these days...

If I were to guess that he/she never paid it... Anyone care to take a wager?

Well, even if mIRC could be made to use newer Windows controls to make it look a little newer, I'd rather have Khaled add useful features than to take the same time just to make mIRC look pretty. I, for one, don't like all these "pretty" apps... they hurt my eyes.

My thoughts:
Do I like smileys? Sure. Are they important to have? No. Is it worth spending time making the chat window allow for graphics and text both? Not really.

Do I like avatars? Yeah. Are they important to have? Nope. Worth spending time to implement? No.

Do I like skins? Rarely. Are they important to have? No. Is it worth taking time to implement? No... if you absolutely need to have them, you can make skins using other utilities that could be made to work with mIRC.

Do I like audio/video chat? I don't much care one way or another. Is it important? Not usually. Is it worth adding? Perhaps.

There is a LOT of time for mIRC developement. OK, so I won't pretend to know more than the tiniest bit about Khaled and I'm sure he's a busy guy -- but he himself has stated that mIRC is his primary source of income. Is it really that gracious to reward those who have been supporting him for so long with only one or two releases a year? Often with minor bug fixes or small additions?

So when you talk about "worth spending time" -- well if you can run a DLL to quickly add smilies into a mIRC window, it ought to be no more than a week's work to actually implement it -- if that time was spent on mIRC. Now, I'm not saying I would like to see this feature specifically, but it's an example.

mIRC development seems to have ground almost to a halt, and its not just the cosmetics.

"If it ain't broke don't fix it" -- fine, but I myself have been persuaded by posters on this thread that the Internet is changing, as is software, and mIRC is 'falling behind' in terms of feature set. And the cosmetics.