I actually figured you were thinking of the way to do it in the Win32 API...
Necroman; Also the RichEdit control is a bit crap at displaying certain fonts as you probably know(?).
And you're not mistaken about mIRC drawing everything itself.
I'd use that static window and some things to look up would be;
WM_DRAWITEM
GetTextMetrics
SetBkColor
SetTextColor
CreateFont
FillRect
TextOut
And of course other things.. (scrollbar control etc.)
Be prepared to do some calculating on this if you're up to it..
Alot of string manipulations and a bit of logical thinking.
I like how Khaled did this, this thing is one of the things that I admire most about mIRC.. it's nicely executed.
I would also recommend you to draw a character at a time too.. and I am guessing Mardam-Bey does that.
That means of course you'll have to take care of wordwrapping and what else yourself too.
Maybe even Khaled will notice this thread and give you some pointers on how to start with this?
Hope it all works out for you