Forums General Discussion future plans for mIRC

hi,

i see there havent been any updates or releases of mIRC for a while now. just wanted to find out are there any plants to release another version of mIRC? and whats happening to mIRC?

thanks...

As always future versions of mIRC are never pre-announced. However, mIRC is still in development, so one can assume there will be a new version in the future. It is also known from Khaled's website that he has been studying for a Master's degree, and this may well have been taking up all of, or most of, his time.

Regards,

people are getting bored of mIRC, a new version might change that. popularity of IRC in general has fallen.....

hope we see something new soon

who are these people you speak of? can you please supply a list of say 2000 with email addys who well support your assumption.

I don't think either that ppl lose interest in irc. I even say people become more and more interested in it and many new people find their way to irc.

If I bring up this subject in any of the 5+ help channels I join there's normally at least 5 people (usually more) that will say they're getting tired of waiting for a new version and the current features are becoming more and more boring (scripters especially).

Yeah, it's terrible for the scripters. At this rate people might have to start using mIRC for crazy things like chatting.

Yeah that's my point

Chatting?! That's insane. Who would want to do a thing like that. If people wanted to chat they'd just do it on AIM!!!111

Personally, I like seeing updates and new things being added, but I rather have them come slowly and be thought out and looked over for any possible bugs, rather than get an update, have something break or be vulnerable, and then after the damage is already done, have to update again when the fix is released.

I can tell you from the point of a scripting site owner that the rate of visits on my web site has dropped well over 40% in the last 4-5 months because of the lack of innovation and new mIRC version.

I know Khaled must be busy with some other stuff in his life, but the lack of news is killing the scripting community slowly. I, myself am trying to code some new stuff (extension DLLs) to help revive the scripting fervor of people by enabling new stuff, but without a new version of mIRC before the end of 2005, I don't think we'll revert to an increasing number in people interested in scripting as almost everything has been done already.

You can see the drop on most scripting channels and popular websites around.

And yet, here I am, scripting more and more.

I like mIRC the way it is. New features are good... if they're useful. But, I am perfectly happy with the way it is right now. Patience is a virtue, as they say.

From the number of newbies connecting all the time in channels I'm in, I'd say there is still enough new people joining IRC. Sure, we lose some people... but, most of those are probably the same people who use mIRC only for downloading... and, who really cares if they leave... they probably don't pay to use mIRC, anyhow. Many of the others aren't leaving because of mIRC, but because they have lives and can't be on chatting for hours at a time.

I would love new features/fixes, and don't think it is fine the way it is right now at all.

Have you ever worked with COM? I would just _love_ to be able to script COM events, but that isn't possible in mIRC scripting, without resorting to VBScript. But we are mIRC scripers, not VBScripters. $comval has severe efficiency issues, and there are many many many more useful things I could say but I'll spare you the details. I would _love_ to be able to parse binvars with $regsub. Imagine, you could parse an entire website in a single string (no chunks!) with a powerful tool such as $regex in one command, taking anything you need from it. I would _love_ it if $regsub's replacement string would evaluate dynamically with each substitution, and I'm sure that anyone who knows regsub would love this feature. I can tell you right now: that would be incredibly useful. I would _love_ to be able to use sockets and connect to secure sites, though that isn't possible. Anyway, no need for me to re-post all these feature suggestions, but you catch my drift.

Of course you're fine with the way it is, that's because there is still a lot of room for improvement, and there are still many scripting features you have not exhausted yet.

This is however different for people who have been scripting for a while (or as in the case of myself, those that devoured it in just over a year).

I've been where you are right now, that is being very excited with scripting, and doing it an aweful lot, thinking it's great.

However, nowadays I _never_ script anymore, aside from a post now and then here in the forums, which I don't really consider scripting.

I would like new things to be added, and I can't imagine any scripter saying otherwise. $v1 and $v2 only got introduced in the last mIRC version..and I can't even count anymore how many times I've used them.

The -k flag was only added to filter in 6.15, and got fixed in 6.16 so that it is now flawless, and I've used it tens of times.

Those two things are very very small additions to mIRC scripting, and look how many times they've been used so far. My point is that new additions can and will be useful, even the extremely small ones as I just noted.

I don't want it to stay the way it is. Me and probably the entire scripting scene _want_ new features. A few months ago I was on the verge of forgetting mIRC and I even put "Retired from mIRC Scripting" in my signature. Though the love is strong so I'm still here. At the current rate of development, it isn't going to last though.

I agree with what ClickHere said. It is very noticable that the interest on scripting sites has decreased severly. I mean, just take a look at what screenshots they accept these days on ms.org, and how little new ones there are seen, compared to the days where mIRC scripting was in its prime.

I did say useful features are good.

As for new features for scripters, yes, if you are scripting, new features make scripting more interesting as there are new things to do. If you're not a scripter, new scripting features mean little to you.

Anyhow, mIRC isn't a full programming language and I doubt it ever will be. (Yes, I know you know that). As such, there needs to be some point where new scripting abilities would need to stop or else it will become a full programming language. As it is, people already make many scripts that have absolutely nothing to do with IRC. I'm not saying it's wrong (I do so myself)... just that doing so bring mIRC scripting away from just scripting and into programming.

Basically, I wasn't saying that new features are bad. I was saying that mIRC is good enough as it is that there isn't a need to leave mIRC just because of slow updates. Patience in waiting on updates is good and is what I was getting at.

That's completely wrong. They should be excited as well, because they are the ones that download snippets/addons/full scripts, that depend on those scripting features. They are the ones that we help day in day out on these forums. (Ok we help other scripters as well, but you get the point.)

mIRC wouldn't be what it is today without its scripting feature. How you can say new scripting features don't benefit people who don't script is beyond me.

I'm sure the people who use an !imdb or !google bot were very glad, although indirectly, that socket support was added to mIRC scripting. They wouldn't be able to use such bot without it.

And $v1 helps the user who isn't scripting something? It's a faster method of doing what was already possible.

I admit that truly NEW features in scripts that can be used to make something that was not possible previously will affect non-scripters. But, if it was already possible to write a script to do something, then the new scripting feature isn't really going to make much difference to a non-scripter.

The $v1/$v2 example was obviously an example of a benefit to scripters, whilst the things I mentioned about COM and $regsub are obviously exampls of benefits to scripters that will also benefit non-scripters.

Don't see it as black and white. Of course, not _every_ new little feature will be of use to the non-scripters. Sometimes a new feature will only benefit non scripters, sometime it will benefit solely scripters, and quite often both.

Btw $v1 isn't faster in any way than $ifmatch was (aside from the 1 microsecond because the parser has to parse a few less bytes), the real benefit here is being able to use $v2, and perhaps the shorter notation for the old $ifmatch.

The whole reason I posted is because I don't agree that you use the argument "it's fine for me", and "patience is a virtue". It might be fine for you, like I explained, it isn't for others who have been scripting longer or have exhausted anything there is to be done in mIRC. Patience is a virtue, but you haven't been waiting as long as others.

I see no problem with giving an opinion here. I said only that *I* like it as it is... I didn't say anyone had to agree. It was just an opinion. And it was just a comment meant as response to the previous comments regarding new features being needed in order to prevent people from stopping using mIRC.

And, patience is always good regardless if you've waiting a week or a decade. Even if I've not needed to really wait on too much in mIRC for too long (nothing more than a year, anyhow, since I don't generally care about waiting on stuff that isn't available), there are MANY things I've had to wait on for more than 10 or 15 years. So, you can't really say that I don't know anything about what patience is just because I don't need to wait on much in mIRC.

I can see com being used to make things for non-scripters (at least for those who want access to data from, or some other method of controlling/using, other apps from mIRC). However, I can't see how $regsub specifically benefits a non-scripter. Obviously, it makes doing regex much easier, but I'm sure anything $regsub can do could also be done in some other way. It might not be as clean or as fast, but I'm sure it would be possible. As such, I just can't see that really benefiting the non-scripter who doesn't know if a script uses $regsub or some other method. At least, not unless it saves noticeable time for a script to run.

A couple of weeks ago, someone came to me on IRC, they had trouble parsing a website. The problem was the entire site was on 3 lines or so, and he couldn't parse it using variables obviously. Parsing with binvars on the spot doesnt help either, because the received data is chunked in parts. Parsing with binvars _could_ work if the entire site is first written to a file, and then read into a binvar, and parsed with $bfind. $bfind however only accepts wildcards, not a powerful tool as regex, and it involves a lot more coding, and isn't nearly as flexibly as $regsub is.

This person knows regex, but still came to me. I ended up giving him a code that uses COM to communicate with the DOM (document object model) to let IE do the parsing, so we can simply iterate through a collection.

If he could pass the string to a $regsub, he wouldn't have had to contact me, and I wouldn't have had to think for an hour how to solve this in a reasonable way.

Have you ever wanted to modify a file that contains thousands of lines of data? Maybe something similar to what that Bob57 guy had in his File I/O thread. There is no way using conventional methods, as they are all too slow. The code I wrote for him was atleast 30 lines, though If i could have passed a binvar to a regsub, it would have been 4 lines at most (I'm being generous here)

Do you remember I gave you the advice in that thread to use the file handling commands or filter instead of $read as that would be way too slow. Going by your logic of "Obviously, it makes doing regex much easier, but I'm sure anything $regsub can do could also be done in some other way. It might not be as clean or as fast, but I'm sure it would be possible.", then we should have never introduced the file handling commands, because we already have /write, $read /bwrite and /bread, right?

The "if we can do it in one way, why would we ever need an other" mentality. If $regex has no purpose whatsoever, then why does it exist in the first place? If it has a purpose for scripters, then it has a purpose for the people the scripters script for.

Take a look at this post. I look forward to seeing your scripted version not using regex/regsub, providing the same functionality. Good luck

Anyway, we both got our point accross and I'm ok with that, agreeing to disagree is fine for me.

I didn't say it had no purpose or that it wasn't better. Just that I figured just about anything done with $regsub could be done without it as well (even if it took somewhat longer... as long as it wasn't that much longer). If that's not true, then that's fine.

Even if mIRC scripting was to become a programming language I don't see why you'd have a problem with it. You're not forced to use every feature available to you, but people that need (want) them can.