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#228905 14/01/11 07:28 PM
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If bold, underline, reverse, and italics are supports so far, why not add something like ^S to make strikethrough text?


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Doing a quick search turned up these results:

result 1 - result 2

Personally, I really don't use mirc much anymore, but I never saw the need for strike through text. When I was using mirc all the time, I wanted ^S to be used for something else (the symbol font Pirch used), but strike thru, is nothing more than a visual thing and doesn't add to the program at all. It's not to say it WONT be done, I just wouldnt support the addition of strike thru - I'd rather see other things added than more font styles.


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Strikethrough is used mostly to cross out something that is incorrect without actually removing it completely. Considering you cannot edit something already sent to the server and you can easily edit any line before it's sent, there isn't any reason I can think of for adding that to mIRC. Do you have a valid reason for it?


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Originally Posted By: Riamus2
Strikethrough is used mostly to cross out something that is incorrect without actually removing it completely. Considering you cannot edit something already sent to the server and you can easily edit any line before it's sent, there isn't any reason I can think of for adding that to mIRC. Do you have a valid reason for it?


It's the more widely understood alternative to using ^H to type out stup^H^H^H^H^H hilarious jokes.

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with a suitable font, you can use certain special Unicode characters to create the appearance of strike-through text. for example:

Code:
alias strikethrough return $regsubex($1, /(*UTF8)(?!^|$)/g, $chr(822))


then $strikethrough(text) returns the string with $chr(822) inserted between every character. this code point appears to create a hyphen that spans about half of the previous character and half of the next. for strings comprising single characters you can play around with $chr(821) but this doesn't look as good as the above. check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough#Computer_methods

for more info on this.


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It seems like that method does not play nice with Fixedsys (I imagine since it's not a Unicode font).

Edit: I just noticed you said "with a suitable font".

Last edited by drum; 15/01/11 06:37 AM.
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Originally Posted By: Riamus2
Strikethrough is used mostly to cross out something that is incorrect without actually removing it completely. Considering you cannot edit something already sent to the server and you can easily edit any line before it's sent, there isn't any reason I can think of for adding that to mIRC. Do you have a valid reason for it?


Why have it on forums, then? Or have it at all on a computer when you can most likely just completely erase something instead of striking it through? I don't have a valid reason for the color codes, bold, reverse, underline, or italics beyond to make certain things look more appealing. I'm not trying to sound rude. Sorry if it sounds that way.

Edit: I tested what you posted, jaytea. Looks cool.

Last edited by SimplicityX; 15/01/11 10:43 AM.

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If you read what I said, I said that strikethrough is used to cross out something that is incorrect without removing it. This is useful on forums when someone has already replied to something you said and you realize that what you said was wrong. You can cross it out so people reading it after can know that it's wrong without removing it, which would make it look strange when the post that replied to you quoted your mistake.

Because you cannot edit previous lines in a channel or query, this is not useful in the same way that it is in locations where it is used.


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drum #228924 15/01/11 08:12 PM
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Originally Posted By: drum
Originally Posted By: Riamus2
Strikethrough is used mostly to cross out something that is incorrect without actually removing it completely. Considering you cannot edit something already sent to the server and you can easily edit any line before it's sent, there isn't any reason I can think of for adding that to mIRC. Do you have a valid reason for it?


It's the more widely understood alternative to using ^H to type out stup^H^H^H^H^H hilarious jokes.



That as well. It doesn't have a really -vital- role, but there are a lot of things that aren't entirely needed.


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Strikethrough can have a place on IRC just like message boards..

<User1> How can I retrieve the middle of a string?
<User2> $right($left(string,5),2) = in
<User3> More like $right($left(string,5),2) $mid(string,4,2)


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Um... Why in the world would you do that? Strikethrough is normally not used to edit someone else's message except in a shared document type of situation where you want to keep track of who did what.

Anyhow, I'm not saying it can't be used. I'm just saying that it really doesn't have a real use other than "just because." There are many more things I'd rather see implemented than something that doesn't have a good use for it. And because the majority of reasons people use strikethrough elsewhere don't really apply to IRC, I think that even if it's added to the "todo" list that it is placed at the bottom.


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It's irresponsible for mIRC to go around adding random control codes for arbitrary text style modifiers. Everytime a control code is added, other clients need to add it for compatibility purposes. In addition, mIRC needs to make sure that other clients don't already recognize the control code for something else. This is/was actually a real problem for the newly implemented italic code, which isn't displayed correctly under certain IRC clients. I'd rather not see problems like this repeated, because it makes things much more complicated for IRC client implementors.

Furthermore, there are only so many control codes available to be used. I would imagine we would want to use them sparingly, and not waste the non-printable character space codes that aren't really used. This matters, because once a control code is implemented in multiple clients, it can't be taken back. We will have to live with it for the rest of IRC, just like bold,colour and underline. Note that this is a real problem too-- mIRC currently cannot display these characters in the editbox in Vista and 7, and there is basically no solution for the near future because of the choice of codepoints for the existing control codes. This problem, of course, could not have been foreseen, but let's not make even more of the IRC experience depend on this non-portable, problematic, syntax.

IMO with all these complications, I don't see it as worthwhile to add in something typographically esoteric/obsolete like strikethrough. Even HTML5 is deprecating <strike>.


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Originally Posted By: Riamus2
Um... Why in the world would you do that? Strikethrough is normally not used to edit someone else's message except in a shared document type of situation where you want to keep track of who did what.

Anyhow, I'm not saying it can't be used. I'm just saying that it really doesn't have a real use other than "just because." There are many more things I'd rather see implemented than something that doesn't have a good use for it. And because the majority of reasons people use strikethrough elsewhere don't really apply to IRC, I think that even if it's added to the "todo" list that it is placed at the bottom.


Most formatting options are "just because." Bold, italics, underline, colours, are all just used to highlight text, to differentiate it from other text, or to make things look pretty. Strikethrough can also be used to highlight parts of text; namely mistakes.

If somebody wanted help with a long script and you only needed to change part of it, you could use a strikethrough to indicate which part of the code to change, as I showed above.

Strikethrough has its uses just like other formatting options. One isn't really any more useful than the other.

That said.. I'm not sure it's worth the effort of adding it myself as other clients won't support the control code.

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Without taking sides in this discussion, I think what's being described here is actually a request for addition to the IRC protocol...

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Control codes are not part of the IRC protocol, so not really.

edit: Given what I wrote in my previous post, it sure sounds like it SHOULD be part of the IRC protocol, but it's not.

Last edited by argv0; 21/01/11 04:28 AM.

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