Forums Feature Suggestions Graphical 'smilie' support in mIRC

Hey People,

First off i would like to thank all people who build mIRC. I have tried many other IRC clients but every time i went back to the good old mIRC. Chappeau!

I would like to have some kind of image support in mIRC. (No, i don't mean the theme support.) Image support in a way like Trillian or MSN Messenger (last one doesn't support IRC, i know). This clients give you the option to use graphical smilies instead of the standard raw-text codes like : ) or : (.

I know there are a lot of people out of here who are about to kill me know but i like the graphical smilies over the text ones. If only mIRC scripting support images in the 'conversion-window' we are far less from home i guess. In this way nobody has to use them, everybody can decide on her/his own if he want to have text or image based smilies.

This is really the only thing i miss in mIRC, i planned using Trillian for only this option but after a few hours i switched back to mIRC because of it scripting language and customizeabilities.

I hope you people won't blame me too much... as i said before it would only like to see mIRC supporting it, not to let you use it.

Thanks for reading! Hope someone could tell me more

PS: excuse my bad english, i'm still learning!

It's been suggested a few times now and there is mixed support for it though I wouldn't mind seeing it. :tongue:

personnally I still don't see the point to have graphical smileys in an IRC client. IRC is text so why add ugly gfx?

all chat programs I have (trillian/certain webchats I hardly ever use) I always disable the smileys because I think they are ugly and you can express so much better by ASCII :-] they always screw up your sentences too :-[ (like: (17:08) make the last 2 chars a 'cool smiley' for instance...)

Well I guess it's all a matter of personal taste. I think they're fine on forums and stuff, but I really wouldn't like to see it implemented in mIRC. Unless there's an option to disable it, obviously.

I would hate to even see it suported *bad word* MSN and other *gfx smily* chat clients... gfx smilys does not belong in mIRC or IRC at all, and yes, we're gona kill ya, i've alreaddy know where you live, and i'm taking the next plane... see ya... (idrmt)

well things that would turn (17:08) into a smiley, imho do it wrong, it should be done in such a way that no false negatives occur and false positives are reduced. For example:

hey there 8) that should make a smiley
hey there 8)! that should make a smiley
hey there (mr8)! that should not.

A smiley token should be defined as "a series of characters consisting of either a line boundary (beginning of text/end of text) and a space on the other side, a space character on both sides, or a punctuation character .?!,;"' on one or more sides. Something like that would signifigantly reduce the problem you describe. Plus as I mentioned in other posts about this, who said there won't be a "disable smiley support" checkbox?

Oh and for the "IRC is text", that has little relevance. The majority of smiley requests don't say "make it so it shows up on other people's screens as well" that is, they don't say there should be a code sent that other clients should display as a smiley, they say LOCALLY it should be displayed as a smiley. If that violates the "IRC is text" motto you seem to believe in, well then why have picture windows? IRC is text, not pictures. The reason is because picture windows (like smileys) won't modify, expand, or rely on the IRC protocol in any way. They will be local features that allow you to display information in the method you determine is best for you.

Unfortunately, I've seen many things integrated in to clients at the local level become "law" for channel ops...

* mIRC ships with graphical smilies turned on.
* People abuse channels with
* No one bothers to stop and think "Hey if that feature bothers me I'll just turn it off."
* Kickbots configured to kick on all instances of smilies.
* Friendly new user innocently ends sentence with
* Ops say it is his fault.
* Thus ends friendly new user's expedition in to his new found world of IRC.

Well if you read my other posts I had suggested that smilies be OFF by default, therefore the entire scenario you presented doesn't occur. I also said that there should be flood protection
"Only translate N smilies into icons per line"
for example. So that stops flooding issues.

Im all for emoticons. dIRC supports them very well, with none of these problems people are bringing up. And ofcourse it would be off by default, so it wouldn't harm anyone who doesn't want it.

I think you are forgetting that all good java applets support smileys. Flooding with them is the same as an ASCII popup in mIRC, it consumes room and you can disable colour in your room with +c or use a bot to kick repeat flooders or better still just strip codes and continue to live in a black and white world.

Oh please... forget it -_-

Even though it would be cool to have smileys-floods in channel, lot of peoples crying because their screen is filled up with smileys they don't want, lamers trying to mass-flood channels, etc... (note the sarcasm!)
This option shouldn't be added... or, at least, it should default to OFF.

Smiley flood control, as suggested by codemastr would be nice too, but what to do if the flood comes from different sources?

Example:
Let's suppose you set your anti-flood to 6:2 (max: 6 smileys per 2 seconds). As you can see, 6:2 isn't excessive... (who would send you more than 6 smileys in 2secs except lame flooders?) ... But:
How to handle the case where 10 different peoples send you 6 smileys per 3 seconds?!
This would make 60 smileys every 3secs (or 10 smileyrs/sec if you prefer)...
I'm sure that mass-flooders and IRC warbot coders will be really happy to see this feature added!! Think of it before you do anything, please!

++, MiSsInGnO
Ce qui ne peut être vécu peut être codé! (scripters rule #1)

Note: sorry for my bad english

If it is turned off or you have flood protection turned on then it shouldn't be of any concern. I don't know why people keep beating up the flood yarn - when if the feature is added there would be a flood protection added too, just as is for CTCP.

At the end of the day if you don't want to be flooded then don't use IRC because there is dozens of ways to flood people.

Your flooding argument is irrelevant. Have you looked at mIRC's flood control? See how it has the ability to stop overall floods as well as floods from specific users? Well why would it be logical to assume that the feature would no longer work once smiley support is added?

I already hate the people who spam channels with excessive icons because of CGI:IRC emoticon support... they think everyone sees those dreaded icons so they through like 10 aftereachother per line...

why degrade mIRC into an "MSN clone" by giving it emoticon support? use another IRC client if you want to go with the masses... ASCII > GFX any day!

besides, I use smileys alot :-] and that anoys the hell out of people who have GFX smileys *G* also because the smiles I use don't trigger and they do all those weird MSN type icons and all I see is text so have no idea what they want to point out :-P

I'm not really against graphical smilies at the client level, but wonder what the benefit is...

If mIRC ships with it enabled (being the most popular IRC client) users will think everyone in the world sees their strings of cute jumpy little smileys as they do. If it ships with the feature turned off, users who want graphical smileys would still be posting to this board asking for the feature.

It adds more bloat to the download and would probably slow down scrolling (scrollback).

I'd venture to guess that their would be other needless problems associated with it... the fixed size of the gif and the different font types/sizes would make for good uneven line spacing and chunky scrolling (unless the screen is rendered which would mean more bloat and slowdown). If smiley patterns are replaced with images to help speed up scrollback, then you have issues like what happens when the buffer is saved or what goes in to the clipboard for a copy-n-paste.

It'd be interesting to see how that all gets sorted out.

Ok I'm going to say this for the last time(s):
I SAID DISABLED BY DEFAULT
I SAID DISABLED BY DEFAULT
I SAID DISABLED BY DEFAULT
I SAID DISABLED BY DEFAULT
I SAID DISABLED BY DEFAULT

I don't see why ANYTHING you mention is a problem if it is disabled by default. If you don't like it... then guess what? DON'T ENABLE IT!

What? Enable it by default?

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure he said ENABLED too.

I'd be happy if smilie support is added.

Likewise... I would be happy too.
And 'DISABLED BY DEFAULT' sounds like an ingenous way of preventing ticked off mIRC users who disagree with the idea of having smileys. (The flood support sounds like a real plus too.)

As far as users coming to the board requesting the feature become available after mIRC is already shipped with smiley support... do what you guys usually do, point them to a thread that explains how to have the emoticons enabled, or point them to the help file. Simple as that. (And just for the record, only REAL mIRC users read the versions.txt. If they don't read it and see the changes that have been made, then its their own darn fault for being lame!! --I read it... I don't get some of the more technical updates that were added, but I read it still.)

So, looks to me as if there still is no good argument of why emoticon support should not be added.
(But that's just my personal opinion.)