Forums Feature Suggestions Text/window control (images etc)

No, Im not asking for emoticon support...

But the ability to manipulate the way things are displayed in channel windows etc... Like the possibility with the editbox (due to it being richedit).

If the main channel window was Richedit we could easily include pictures, change fonts, styles (italic etc) and more...

Is there a reason that I have no knowledge of as to why mIRC dosnt use this at the moment?

I may be wrong, but I was sure that all windows (including the scripts editor) was rich edit already. If so, then you just need to request the control options to add images.

Now, there was a thread a year+ ago about emoticons that actually turned into what I believe to be an excellent suggestion. There are many reasons to include images in a window that are not related to emoticons. Error messages would be one example. Rather than specifically giving emoticon support, the thread was about giving support for images in general. Users who wanted emoticons would have to get images for those emoticons and then use a scripted solution to display them in the right locations. It wouldn't be built in and wouldn't require an option that people who didn't want emoticons would have to disable. It would only affect the person using the script that offered them. However, the same support would allow other scripts to display other types of images for other events and situations (errors, joins/quits/parts, etc).

I'm not a supporter of emoticons being built-in, but I do like the ability to allow scripts to show images. It also lets users who want emoticons to use any images they want rather than pre-defined images.

I will fully support this, and I agree with the person above me who's writing ridiculously long essays, but gets his point stated very good and thoroughly.

Richedit is a very general control. Using "richedit" in itself doesn't mean much in itself if the specific features (there are many) of richedit themselves are implemented. It's not as easy as saying "use richedit and mIRC will automatically support images"... there is a lot of scripting functionality that has to be baked in so that you can actually make use of a full Richedit window.

Currently the channel window is a custom control that is *based on* richedit. Anyway, there are plenty of technical details, but the important thing to know is that it's not just a matter of flipping a switch. If K were to add controls to the window, it would be a large undertaking and probably not happen overnight. It would be similar to him *re*implementing dialogs.. and think how basic the dialog support is after all this time.

Yeah, I tend to type a lot. But I'd rather explain fully than have to keep adding more small posts to get the point(s) across.

I didnt think the control in the main window was richedit... the editbox is, and you can put images in it (obviously with an external application/dll).

I'll have a look later if I can get it to work with the main window, allthough I seriously doubt I can.
AFAIK main window is "drawn on"... Can anyone confirm this?

At the moment I use picwins everywhere, from things like youtube previews to text translating. Being able to put a pictue picture in the main window would mean I dont have 123214325342534 windows open (exaggerated, a little).

make a dll, lol

Funny as i had a feel the final tendency of the discussion was that it didn't really matter if emoticon support was added if it could be easily switched on or off and modified. The big open question however is: what should be default? :p

Anyway as argv[0] stated its not an actual RichEdit control, so alot of behaviour as we know it would (probably, doesn't have to technically) change regarding the selection Model when switched over to the RichEdit from the common controls. I think the choice was made in regards to the custom Richedit was 16bit support back in the day, which nowadays might not stand as firmly as requirement.

When it's a "default" RichEdit it would open up a world of possibilities (i.e embedded OLE applications, text aligning, different wrapping) but without valid grounds for wanting them i think we'll luck out on that :p