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#4409 01/01/03 10:11 PM
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we've got Bold. we've got Underlined. we've got no Itallics. we WANT itallics, as they are more usefull in conversation. please give us itallics....

#4410 01/01/03 10:12 PM
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please don't say "we" because "we" refers to the mIRC community, of which I am part, and I DEFINATELY do NOT want italics. Speak for yourself, and not for everyone else.

#4411 01/01/03 10:43 PM
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"we" in no way means the mirc community. "we" means "the speaker (ie. me) and an unspecified group of other people (ie. the majority of people i've mentioned it to)".

don't put words into my mouth by saying i was speaking for all mirc users, when i neither said nor implied any such thing. it should have been obvious i wasn't, as only an abject moron would assume that any group of people that large would agree on much of anything.

that said, to expand on my request, using some actual explanation....

there is a sizable percentage of users who actively desire itallics. yes there are *other* ways of doing things, but they are, for the most ugly, and have no defined meaning... also, itallics isn't supposed to be used to simply draw attention to text. it has a few specific gramatic uses (off the top of my head, to clearly mark text as being in a differant language).

IRC is a text-based medium. now, i recognize it may not be possible (for some reason i don't know) in mIRC to implement itallics - or at least not easy. but it strikes me that when using something that is as limiting as pure-text, building the standard text-options into the program is a logical thing to do. two of these standards are Bold and Underline, both are in place. the other (and probably, in most forms of writing, most common) is the absent Itallics.


#4412 02/01/03 01:58 AM
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For the record:

When you say "we" in the context in which you did, you do imply that you mean everyone. And, a large group of people can agree on something, for example: a large group of people think mIRC is a great IRC Client.

You say there is a sizable percentage of users who activlely desire italics, well, let's do the math. Sizable implies a majority, and let's say there are 100, 000 users in mIRC. That means you must know 50, 001 of them at least, and they all want italics in mIRC. Since you say they actively desire it, where's the evidence? I see no one really requesting it (outside these boards), or commenting on how it's missing, etc.

Next, FYI, italics is used to draw attention to a specific word or phrase. It is often used as a form of emphasis, or to show that a certain word or phrase defers in connotation that it normally would. Such in the form of sarcasm, or quotation.

In terms of logical application, how is it logical to add in italics to mIRC? You say it's because Bold and Underline are already there. How do you make a deduction from this? The real reason Bold, and Underline are available, is because it's written into the IRC protocol. Italics is not. If you're so hard-bent on logically explaining why Italics should be there, take a look, logically at why it may not be. Why would there be bold and underline but not italics? MAYBE because khaled HATES italics? Or..Maybe it's because it's not supposed to be there.

How do you get off calling people morons? Maybe you should think about what you're going to say before you say it.

P.S. The only reason you made this post was because you saw Bold and Underline and thought "Where's italics" and without even THINKING came to this board and made a post.


P.P.S. Sorry...I'm in a ranting kind of mood smile

Regards,


-DarkStarX
"If at first you don't succeed, sky diving's not for you."
#4413 02/01/03 03:14 AM
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I can remember before there were computers on every desktop. I can remember when computers were only in a few places in the country and none were connected. They surely were not used for typing or publishing. Back then, we used manual typewriters (I still have mine); if you were very lucky, you had access to an electric typewriter. We did not have italics back then. Underline was used for italics in everything except typeset material (galleys, proofs, etc.). (I do remember when the IBM Selectric came out with an italic ball - easy to switch out to italicize the words you wanted and then switch back to a normal typeface.)

If you wanted to indicate a publication name or a book title in your text, you hit the backspace key until you got to the begining of the word...then you hit the underscore key till you got to the end of the word. If your ribbon was running low, sometimes this required you to do this several times before the entire underline showed up correctly.

If you wanted to emphasize something with bold, you backspaced to the beginning of the word and typed the word again...harder, repeating until you got a bold word. There were even some typewriters that would let you offset your carriage by a very small amount to type the next version of the word slightly to one side of the letters you just typed.

Italics have replaced underline in some of the major publication styles, but only fairly recently. I still have my old Turabian that specifies only underline. Turabian (University of Chicago Press) was the publication standard until the APA (3rd ed.) got popular in 1983; MLA really didn't catch on until later, around 1988.

Personally, I belive italics would be a nice addition. In some fonts, it works well. I will not lose sleep over it if italics never makes it into mIRC. It's just another way to set off text as being more emphasized, and I already have -=> LOTS <=- of ways to do *that* already without even resorting to bold/underline/reverse/color/italics/flash/xml/whatever. I don't personally see any reason why $chr(23) might not be used (or any of the other unused non-printing characters) for italics.

Will that be an addition to "the protocol"? You bet. Will those UNIX uber-geeks still complain about it? Don't they always complain if you're not them? (In fact, I'd like to see mIRC use BEL for that just to piss them off! <EG> I'd have to italicize every letter of every word - get their console ringing like a church bellfry at a wedding.)


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#4414 02/01/03 04:50 AM
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Do try making your point without name calling and insults please.


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#4415 02/01/03 07:01 PM
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Well then, if you're gonna add italics wouldn't the next logical step be "where is double underline???" and "where is overline???" and "where is strikethrough???" "where is subscript???" "where is superscript???" I think you can see my point? mIRC is a _chat_ program, not a wordprocessor. You're right italics do have purpose in English rules, such as what Hammer mentioned. But, both APA and MLA allow you to substitute underline for italics. Why? Because not everyone has the ability to use italics. As was said, old typewriters could not handle this.

You said that "the majority of people i've mentioned it to" liked it. Well give me a number. "the majority of people" could mean 2 out of 3. Thats not that great. If it were 700 out of a 1000, well then I could say maybe it is needed. And if there are 700 people out there agreeing with you, how come there hasn't been 700 replys to this post saying "I totally agree with you, add italics"?

#4416 02/01/03 08:36 PM
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actually, none of those are used very commonly at all. to be honest, i don't see why they couldn't be added in aswell, though i don't think they'd be used as much as italics. itallics is commonly used and not just as an "attention getting" device, like people keep saying. it has specific meanings and usages. alot of the attention-getters used in irc are workarounds that were thought up because at the time none of the formatting items were possible.

as for a number - i've specifically mentioned it to about 20-30 people. none of them said they didn't want it, and most (15-20) said they did. i'm not gallup, i don't spend all my time running around asking people "hey, do you want mirc to do itallics?" and recording the responses.

and you seem to overestimate the number and type of people who check software forums. and the number of people who will actually post messages with no purpose save to aggree with something. as a general rule, only a small percentage of people make official feedback commentary on anything. also, it's far less likely to see people bother to come out in favor of something they want (unless it's something they consider to be a need), than against something they oppose.

oh, and stating "mIRC is a chat program" has no bearing. first of all, it's probably getting as much, or more, use as a file-exchange medium via fserves than chatting these days. chatting may have been it's original intended usage, but it's by no means all it's used for.

stating that "not everyone has the ability to use itallics" is like saying "not everyone can afford a sports car". just because i can't afford a porche doesn't mean i'd stop you from having one.

why on earth do you care if itallics are added in? it's not like somebody will hold a gun to your head and make you use them. heck, with control-code stripping, you don't even have to see it if other people use it...

if it's some wierd thing about itallics not being in "the standard", allow me to point out that nothing EVER gets added to a standard until somebody rams it down the throat of whichever comitee is responsible...

it's not like i'm requesting picture avatars. (yet...)

#4417 02/01/03 10:07 PM
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Quote:

stating that "not everyone has the ability to use itallics" is like saying "not everyone can afford a sports car". just because i can't afford a porche doesn't mean i'd stop you from having one.

why on earth do you care if itallics are added in? it's not like somebody will hold a gun to your head and make you use them. heck, with control-code stripping, you don't even have to see it if other people use it...


Well for the first part your analogy doesn't really work. Reason is when you drive a porche you are not interfering with my in my stationwagon. But when you use italics, and my client doesn't support it, it means I'm gonna see little "boxes" representing a character my client didn't realize was italics. So having it impairs my chatting experience.

As for your second point about stripping... yea it will render just about all control-code flood stoppers useless. And don't think the flooders won't realize this. $strip is generally used to test for the codes to ban. Well presumably a new flag 'i' would be added. All old scripts/bots would not have this flag and therefore until the problem is fixed people can control-flood easily.

Lastly the point people are making about an "irc standard" makes no sense so there is no point in talking about it. IRC is not standard, it was never accepted as a standard, and it probably never will be. But even if it was, the IRC protocol makes no mention of the contents of the messages sent between users, CTCP, color, bold, underline, etc, none of this is mentioned in RFC1459. They are all extensions added by clients.


#4418 03/01/03 06:24 PM
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mIRC interprets other clients Italic codes as reverse (CTRL+R) and vice versa. So, mIRC has reverse instead of italic. Maybe because it's custom Graphic window cannot render italics as easily as reverse. Either way, it's too late to change it now. It would make mIRC incompatible with older versions, and all that would do is generate complaints. If mIRC introduced a new code especially for italic.. that would be pointless.. because all the other clients which already support italic use mIRC's CTRL+R code. So it would cause an even greater incompatibilty issue that changing mIRC's rendering of CTRL+R. Perhaps an option, To have your own client interpret CTRL+R as italic or reverse is the answer. You may chat with people who don't use mIRC, and wish to see there Italics...

#4419 06/01/03 03:49 AM
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DarkStarX please get a clue if you are going to present information as factual or meaningful.

> The real reason Bold, and Underline are available, is because it's written into the IRC protocol. Italics is not.

Wrong. Bold and underline were added by Khaled and mIRC around version 4.7 in 1996 or so. Neither were part of IRC before that. So, just like he added bold and underline he could do the same for italics. I'm not necessarily saying he should, but I am definately saying that your reasoning is horrible.

> That means you must know 50,001 of them at least, and they all want italics in mIRC. Since you say they actively desire it, where's the evidence?

omg, please get a clue. Apparently you've never taken a course in statistics. You do not need to survey everyone to get an idea of the consensus. For example, within a margin of error of only a few percent, the Nielsen Ratings can say that 23 million people watched an espisode of a TV show based on a survey of only 1500 people. Yes, all the money companies pay for TV advertisement is based off statistical analysis of a relatively small number of people.

Thats what statistics is all about. Your response is complete foolishness.

#4420 06/01/03 06:30 AM
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I have a personal opinion.

I want italics - for foreign words, for intelligent emphasize, for lyrics. Italics, bold and underlined are standard on Windows, so I'd exchange reverse for italics.


Sincerely,
Necroman, #mIRC @ Undernet
#4421 06/01/03 07:13 AM
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I would too...if you want reverse, you can always use $chr(3) $+ 00,01. Reverse, as it is now, is ugly. It's also not used all that much, certainly not as much as it would be if it were italics instead of reverse.


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#4422 06/01/03 08:47 PM
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DarkStarX please get a clue if you are going to present information as factual or meaningful.

Shame you sent that to the wrong poster :-รพ

I wouldn't mind seeing italics included but I usually just type in ALLCAPS when I want to emphasise a phrase or sentence. Holding down the shift key with my left ring finger is a habit I'll find hard to break.

#4423 07/01/03 02:08 AM
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Ooops, so I did. Ah well, hopefully people will figure it out.

I think a lot of people type in ALLCAPS when they want to emphasise something. But, I think Necroman's post makes a great example of why italics are better. Consider these two lines:

I have a personal opinion
I have a PERSONAL OPINION

Both emphasise, but the second is also like.. "ummm... chill out dude, no need to get hostile!!"

#4424 07/01/03 10:02 AM
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I agree, I too would like italics laugh

#4425 07/01/03 02:54 PM
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As would I.....reverse just plain sucks...its too how to say um dull and plain!

#4426 08/01/03 09:13 AM
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I agree.


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#4427 08/01/03 03:47 PM
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Well really I wouldn't say dull and plain, more like just plain ugly smile

#4428 08/01/03 08:15 PM
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Well that too LOL smile


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