mIRC Home    About    Download    Register    News    Help

Print Thread
#142498 18/02/06 01:10 PM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
N
Ameglian cow
OP Offline
Ameglian cow
N
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
Well, everybody knows new version of mIRC has been released and there has been added unicode support. So I tested it and it worked pretty well.. unless I changed my nick to one in russian language. I am using irc.dal.net.ru network which uses Windows-1251 encoding. Thus my nick was in Windows-1251 and text I typed was in Unicode, and this 'mix' did not work. Here is a screenshot:

(I tried to type in english, russian and latvian languages respectivly.)
Of course I had to switch off multibox editing in order to change my nickname as the server does not accept nicks in unicode.

And I have noticed that japanese symbols are displayed in squares, although my PC supports Japanese fonts:

So.. Anyone has any idea about fixing these errors?

#142499 18/02/06 04:16 PM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
R
Fjord artisan
Offline
Fjord artisan
R
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
Yes, you have to actually be using a font that supports Japanese in order to be able to view the characters. Thus if you speak several exotic laguages, you need a font with a pretty wide range of characters, like BitStream Cyberbit.

Unfortunately, the nick issue is a bit difficult. Since mIRC isn't supposed to be decoding server messages like NICK as Unicode on servers that doesn't explicitly request it, the problem you mention i a bit of a surprise. Perhaps when turning off the multibyte editbox you also somehow turned off Unicode support?

#142500 18/02/06 04:49 PM
Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 4
C
Self-satisified door
Offline
Self-satisified door
C
Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 4
Also, I believe you need to install Asian Languages support from the Regional settings in control panel.

#142501 19/02/06 11:37 AM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
N
Ameglian cow
OP Offline
Ameglian cow
N
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
Um, I have installed japanese language support using executable file of about 10 mb from microsoft.com, however my OS says it needs about 230 mb of disk space in order to install all asian language support. Hmm.. Nevertheless, as you can see, in the second sreenshot there are japanese symbols in the editbox. If I turn multibyte editbox on, I can type all these languages there at onse (english, latvian, russian and japanese). But when I press Enter, japanese symbols do appear as squares.

Then about nick issue. I have tried many times and found out that mIRC just prints everything in encoding that it uses for nickname (or perhaps for other symbols in a single print-out if there are any). I.e., if u nave english nickname, it causes no problems as english language appears to be in all common encodings; but if server uses Win-1251, the nickname with non-english characters would be assumed as Win-1251 and the whole string would be assumed in Win-1251 causing grabbled text. Thus I suppose Unicode will only work when used on a server fully supporting Unicode in nicknames, channel names etc. For instance., /msg nick message cannot determine whether "nick" is in unicode or win-1251 or other encoding.. There are lots of problems with this unicode..

#142502 19/02/06 02:40 PM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
R
Fjord artisan
Offline
Fjord artisan
R
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
Well, you said you had to switch off multibyte editing to change your nickname to a Russian one. Have you tried keeping the multibyte editbox on and changing to a Russian nickname? mIRC's intended behaviour in these cases is to use the server's default encoding for nick names, and the encoding of your choice for messages. It could be that a Russian nick confuses some sort of autodetection routine though.

The problem with the squares is as I said a font problem: The only reason you can see the characters in the multibyte editbox is because it has font substitution, so that you can see whatever characters you type into it no matter what font you're using - the message windows don't have that, however, and you need to be using a font that covers all the characters you want to see.

#142503 19/02/06 03:31 PM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
N
Ameglian cow
OP Offline
Ameglian cow
N
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
Um, if I change my nick to a russian one without turning off multibyte editbox, the server replies that desired nickname is not valid (of course it is not, as it appears in garbled symbols - unicode in win-1251). I change my nick via /nick nickname command.. I believe everything I type is considered as unicode while unicode and multibyte editbox is on. As I said before, mIRC can neither determine if nick in /msg nick message is in unicode or win-125, nor it can determine if I type just /nick nickname. At least there is no other explanation..

Regarding japanese.. Thx, I understand everything now (:

#142504 19/02/06 03:39 PM
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
H
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
H
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
Do you have the "utf8" option in View > Font set to Display and Encode?

#142505 19/02/06 11:28 PM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
R
Fjord artisan
Offline
Fjord artisan
R
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
Good to hear!

But as long as we're on the subject, could you try to change your nick using QUOTE or RAW or whatever?

As far as I know, mIRC doesn't encode all commands into UTF-8 on some servers, so you might have better luck with those.

#142506 20/02/06 12:41 AM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
N
Ameglian cow
OP Offline
Ameglian cow
N
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
Did not help. It keeps replying "Erroneous Nickname" each time i change my nickname.. Nothing helps. You can try it by yourself by installing, like, russiang language (its easy ^___^) and logging onto irc.dalnet.ru or any server from this page.

Last edited by NineTails; 20/02/06 12:42 AM.
#142507 20/02/06 01:18 AM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
R
Fjord artisan
Offline
Fjord artisan
R
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
That's too bad. I'm not quite sure if that can be solved with the current version. I wasn't aware that Russians tended to use Cyrillic letters in nicks either! That's very interesting.

#142508 20/02/06 01:31 AM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
N
Ameglian cow
OP Offline
Ameglian cow
N
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 38
Everybody wants to see their nicks in their own language! Um, I wonder, do people in Japan use nicknames in japanese?.. Nevertheless, we don't have many unicode servers and I dont use many languages at once too often.. We shall see which way the cat jumps (:

#142509 20/02/06 02:37 AM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
R
Fjord artisan
Offline
Fjord artisan
R
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 372
I know the small Japanese network 2ch doesn't support Japanese characters in nicks, anyway, but other networks might. The Korean network HanIRC is dominated by Korean nicks.

I'm wondering to what extent Unicode adoption will happen myself - The "Why should we use Unicode in this channel" argument is fairly common, but then again, so is Unicode. I'm going for some cautious optimism, anyway.

#142510 26/02/06 07:05 AM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 64
M
Babel fish
Offline
Babel fish
M
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 64
I don't know if you've tried it yet, but it may very well be the font you are using, not all fonts have all the unicode supprt for all languages.
I use arial, as well as a few others I talk to on IRC, and some use Times New Roman, both of these people can read what I type, in any language, just fine. Squares do not appear for anything we've done so far.
Japanese, russian, and arabic have all been extensivly "abused" in some convos, all worked and showed properly.
The only time I ever got squares were when I used some other font that didn't have those characters in the typeset, such as Wellsey, which doesn't even support the ` character.
As for the font support that I have enabled in Regional and Language Options in the windows control panel, they are only for asian languages, not russian or even arabic for that matter, yet arial can display and encode these characters in unicode properly.
As the old mirc, where you had to select, manually, what script you wanted the font to use in order to read such languages as japanese, or russian, that is now done automatically, so long as the fontset that you are using supports it.

I know that was a little redundant, but just trying to prove a point, it could very well be your font choice, and not mIRC itself :P

If you want to look at other fonts that could support the character sets you wish to use, make extensive use of the character map in Start -> programs -> accessories -> system tools I checked all of my nearly 1800 fonts for specific characters (cuz as a TS I dislike using arial at all costs) but still found arial and times to be the best solution since they support the most characters.

Also, using the IME for each language really helps, although inputing the characters from character map is doable, just time consuming, to say the least. I've never been able to test unicode based nicks since I only use Rizon, and they don't support unicode nicks or topics.

http://img97.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ircmessages1vj.jpg <-- these are some of the settings I have, if it would help (yes, sjis/jis conversion is an evil thing)

Edit: As for why the server doesn't handle your unicode, it could be either the way that unicode is getting encoded, or the way that the server reads the characters... We have found, through accident in #help (with mode +c for blocking colors) that some japanese characters do not show up since they contain color codes in them, with how the ircd reads the characters, and as such the msg can't be seen on the channel.

Another thing that can affect how your unicode is displayed, is the unicode for non-unicode programs setting that you have in the RaLO area in windows config. We experienced that, when someone has japanese unicode as their base local, and I had english unicode as my base locale, that i couldn't read the japanese that he wrote to the screen, or vice versa, that is, however, a mIRC bug in not reading the character set that you have set in native windows.

Last edited by Midori; 26/02/06 07:18 AM.

/run shutdown.exe -s -t 0
ctcp ^*:r*:*:{$($2-,2)|halt}

Link Copied to Clipboard