Forums Feature Suggestions New Forum: "Help File, FAQ, Transations and Tutorials."

I would like to suggest a new forum to be added to the Development Section of these message boards.

We have 3 forums dedicated toward improving mIRC as a program and a scripting language, but no place that really focuses on improving and adding to its documentation.

Help File / FAQ:
To my understanding, Krejt is the primary coordinator of all things written... including the help file, intro and faq, and probably the website too. This forum would be a great place to suggest additions to these documents and to point out mistakes and typos.

Translations:
The coolest and most useful feature of this new forum would be its attraction of multilingual mIRC savvy users. This would be a place where users could collaborate on the translation of documents and eventually mIRC itself. It would also allow users to point out mistakes and typos to improve upon these translations to make sure one person's interpretation is an accurate one.

I know from personal experience that it's exceedingly difficult to find someone that speaks fluently in multiple languages, let alone someone who is willing to translate a document (or even a help macro) for free, and accurate to common mIRC terminology. This would be an extremely handy resource.

Tutorials:
There are many scattered scripting resources and tutorials all over the web, yet some of the best instruction I've seen are right here on these forums.

There are an infinite number of scripting styles, and most of them include bad habits that should be avoided. I'd like to see a place where people can discuss style and technique, and eventually form tutorials that everyone can agree upon. Khaled & Tjerk may even add a Tutorials section to mirc.com where these contributions would be posted.

In short, this new forum would focus on furthering the development of mIRC's documentation and support.

- Raccoon

Racoon, I like the idea and while I am NOT against it, I'll make the following (constructive) criticisms:

Help File/FAQ a great idea however it would have to be made clear that things should be looked up in the version.txt AND help file BEFORE suggesting it (in order to limit the post count). I know a LOT of people dont "RTFM" most of the time and I was found guilty of this myself recently. Also, something should be stated on the forum description that just because a post is made that DOES NOT mean it'll happen (too many people think this these days) and that Khaled / Krejt are the only ones with the power to see it happen.

Translations Im all for the forward movement of translations of programs into other languages even tho I cant help with it

Tutorials this is a grey area. As you said, some of the BEST examples of scripting are on this site. The issue becomes which is truely better "X" or "Y". Sometimes there's more than one right answer that's written 100% correctly and does the job (albeit slower/faster than other methods), but that does not make it WRONG (per se). I'll note goto vs while loops. Both are correct and perfectly fine ways of doing loops (ignoring speed issues atm), but some people are anti-while and others are anti-goto. I also think that adding tutorials to mirc.com's website could have numerous advantages over other sites (which people may not trust AS MUCH - disclaimer - Ive visited some of these sites myself and have nothing bad to say about them). Also, I dont know if you remember but a while ago we (the mirc message board users - possibly on the old board) talked about doing a tutorial/mirc scripting "bible" of sorts covering all kinds of topics etc. I liked this idea, but it never went anywhere.

But who will check the tutorials written? I have seen numerous posts on these forums where people put up code that just simply doesn't work or is filled with errors. If users were able to upload tutorials, who would verify them?

A very valid question to which I have no valid response. SOMEBODY would have to verify that they were valid and accurate and I would not dare suggest anybody in particular nor would I dare tell Khaled/Krejt to do it cause they have WAAAAAY too much work to do and it is also not either of their responsilities to monitor tutorials.

Actually, your post doesn't sound very critical at all.

Regarding that "it be made clear for people to check the helpfile or versions.txt first", I don't really see the relevancy as no help questions will be asked in this forum. In order to post a mistake or spelling error about the help file, one would have to actually read the help file.

As for Tutorials and "which is better", any decent tutorial will teach you all the different aspects of the scripting language, so your mind can wrap around its full potential.

I wouldn't dream of a "Basics of Looping Tutorial" that failed to mention proper and historic use of :label/goto. It is knowing /goto that helps you truly understand /while. Besides, /while is good for "while loops" while /goto is good for "until loops" and other special situations. Nobody is "against" /goto, at least I hope not. Abstinence is the root of evil, not good.

I wouldn't mind seeing a "scripting bible" of sorts, but it would have to be a collaborative effort.
For now, a Tutorial section would do.
- Raccoon

I never suggested that people be freely given the ability to post tutorials on the site. It would obviously have to pass much public subjectivity before it earned a stamp of approval.

This forum would act as a place where someone can write a tutorial and post it to the forum, or if it's large enough they'd post it on their private webspace. People who frequent this forum would point out any errors and objections, and a compromise is hashed out. Once a document is created and refined to the point that everyone thoroughly enjoys it, Krejt would post it.

- Raccoon

yes, a massive colabrative effort would be needed and yes, Id like to see a really good/in depth tutorial on mirc's more advanced scripting methods (I like to think I have a grasp of the more basic methods). I think that IF it could happen it'd be a great thing for ALL mirc scripters (seasoned & newbie alike). After all, how many times (on this board alone) have people said (example), "you can do that?!? really?? since when? I never thought of that"? I myself have had people ask me that before and Im nowhere near the scripter others are. As I've said before, I'd love to see well explained tutorials (and yes, I HAVE seen some very good ones before) covering a range (preferably all, but Im not asking too much am i? LOL) of mirc's scripting abilities and would be happy to contribute what I could to it. A good place to start would be to use some of the tutorials already in existance (that people tend to refer others to). Just thinking about how massive this project (of awesome value) would be is dizzying lol Sometimes I wonder if Khaled ever imagined his program creating this much buzz

[general rant]

Based on the fact that I'll say 99.9% of users agree that the help file should have a "jump" feature, i.e. when you type /help /did it should go right to /did not to the top of the page, and the fact that it has been suggested probably a hundred times, and even so Khaled/Tjerk has not added, I believe they don't really care about the helpfile.

As for the translations, I think this is going to be another "extended dialog controls" feature. One that we're promised, but never materializes. Khaled has stated in his FAQ since as long as I can remember that translations were on the way. Yet, still no translations. In fact (and without trying to start a debate on this matter again) 6.1 only made it harder for people to try and translate it themselves. I firmly believe that we won't be seeing translation support in mIRC for a long time.

I'm not against either of these forums, I just think it's a futile attempt. Khaled/Tjerk seem to be happy with the helpfile the way it is, or else they would have changed it after the numerous requests. Additionally, if Khaled were really serious about translation support, there is no doubt in my mind that it would already be in mIRC.

Heh.. well if you carry on like that, Khaled might just add Translations to spite you. :tongue:
(no retort required, I still hope to see something become of this thread.)

Don't get me wrong, I want to see translations in mIRC. It's just, users have brought it up numerous times, Khaled has said it will be added, and then it never is. Then, when someone asks Khaled "when do you think it will actually be added?" he just pretends he never saw the post and leaves everyone in the dark.

Quite frankly I have never seen something that a goto loop could do that a while loop couldn't (both require the three parameters, start, end and increment), or where a goto loop takes less code. (I also haven't ever seen a goto loop be faster, but that's probably because I haven't had too much experience on the factual differences)

drop it, i admitted i was wrong.

There are circomstances where a /goto loop is ideal, such as when multiple factors influence whether it should loop. As the name says, /while is a Loop While. /goto is the equivilent of a Loop Until.

You can pull off any loop using /while, however, some of the simplest /goto loops would require complex combinations of /continue and /break when done with /while. Take for example a simple SockRead event that loops until $sockbr == 0. Lately I've been seeing people use WHILE (1) to pull off a Loop Until, and that's just obsurd and obnoxious.

If you'd like to discuss this further, I'd like to take it to a different thread or privately as I'm hoping to keep this thread fairly on topic. Or perhaps we could save it for when the new forum is added.