Forums Feature Suggestions HTML Color Support

I'm not sure if this has been touched on at all but I was wondering if it would be possible to implement html color support into mIRC. If you need more demand for it i'm sure that won't be a problem. :-)

-Kalo
Developer
Threewave Software

That would be awesome

What kind of support? I don't get it, could you please post some examples?

I think he means having mIRC support sending/receiving colours as hexadecimal codes.

Basically mirc general colors, such as you have ctrl+k to type in color, background, topic. Also mIRC general colors such as setting action, ctcp, etc etc...all those, all related to the ircing experience. :-)

They could only be local. If it were to support HTML colour codes to use in IRC daily chatting, it would break the compatibility with all the other IRC clients out there.

Now if it's about having local, client-side support to such codes, just like another suggestion I've seen here before about having more than 16 colours to use and customize, it would be great.

Except that there would then be endless bug reports about "why my colours only work on my computer"...

Ref. breaking compatibility, wasn't mIRC the first client to use control codes to define colours anyway, i.e. didn't it set what is now the "standard"?

PM

Yes, about 10 years ago when there was a mere fraction of the number of users on IRC, a handful of IRC clients, and no IRCds (that I know of) that had built-in features which involve handling colours. Times have changed.

Whether this would be inevitable or not, it's a tiny issue in my viewpoint. A sticky thread, good advice etc.. many attempts and time could lessen the personal annoyances.

What has change got to do with anything. No matter what client was first with colour, at the time colour was introduced there was then a degree of incompatability in that only one client would ever recognise it until the authors of the others got off their arses and caught up. It's called leadership.

A single client breaking compatability with several million other users using many dozens of different IRC clients and also with several very popular IRCds is not leadership, that's arrogance and idiocy. If you can't see why that is then I pity you, I can't put it any simpler than that.

Go back and read Pastmaster's last response. Is Khaled arrogant because he pioneered something that ended up being accepted by most? People should upgrade software when updated versions become available, so that solves any long term problems with respect to compatability, except of course those that use other clients (going by Quakenet's poll - 7% many of which are probably just bots anyway). Assuming that, you might have 5% of all connections that are real people using clients like X Chat and Bersirc and whatever else there is. All we have here is a small group of client authors waiting for someone in that group to devise a way of increasing the number of possible colours in the least inconvenient way possible - IE: waiting for someone else to make a move.

At the end of the day I think addition of colour would be nice but it is a trivial subject and the impleentation and any possible incompatibility would also be trivial so stop losing sleep over it. The addition of more colour is not going to destroy the world.

Go back and read my posts, I wasn't talking about when Khaled utilised the current colour scheme, I'm talking about the situation as it is now. Whether people should upgrade or not is irrelevant, the fact is that many don't. You may think that other developers are sitting around waiting for another client to implement colours, I doubt it. You've ignored my mentioning of breaking compatability with certain IRCds, presumably because you haven't got an answer for it. I don't think I could possibly make it any more obvious why it's a bad idea to just jump ahead with such a 'feature' without consulting or considering anyone else in the IRC community.

Lets spare a thought for those poor ircds whose implementations of control code filtering will be broken by this absurd idea! Lets ignore the fact that these ircds have these very filtering controls because they CHOSE to break compatability.

Huh?

Just a point that the ircd developers have done more to segregate the so-called irc community than this feature request could ever hope to, I don't see how 'consulting' them would help.

Huh?

Care to explain how server-side stripping of colour codes (for example) 'segregate[s] the so-called irc community'?

You missed the 'Just a point' part, as in an example of the various changes made to one version of ircd that decrease compatibility with another. This decreased compatibility has resulted in the various code forks, new versions, and even older versions of the same tree being unable to link to one another. While this is all done for advancement, there would be no point consulting them in order to maintain compatability, it isn't there.

How many times have you had to explain to someone that IRC is more than just one network?

I see that this is one of the issues on which we'll just have to agree to disagree (I'm a great believer in being willing to discuss any subject on the condition that we all start by accepting that there are at least two points of view, neither of which is necessarily correct!)

My personal feeling is that mIRC is still so dominant as a client that were it to change the standard, everyone else would eventually follow suit. Arrogance? maybe... so it goes!

I agree with Watchdog that the authors of other clients would rapidly update them to handle the extra colour capability - it would, after all, be in their interest to do so if mIRC led off on this, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, it's also painfully clear that many people DON'T upgrade their clients - often because the upgrade breaks their own and/or favourite scripts. But a nice glossy new feature like extra colours would almost certainly encourage more people to upgrade, which would in turn reduce the number of exploitable clients out there... just a thought!

PM

Incompatability between IRCds is primarily a problem for server admins and not users. Granted, the massive variation in modes etc. is annoying, but I don't see how that affects anything I've said.

Of course if we want to list some other reasons why hex colour codes would suck then a couple come to mind:

- Not many people (on IRC) know hex very well, if at all. Someone deciding they want a darkish orange colour probably aren't going to know/remember what to type, and probably wouldn't even recognize something like BB6600 as being what they wanted if they saw it.

- It's long. Hex codes are fine in HTML because it's all done at design time, however writing a 6-digit code to change a colour mid-sentence is not a pleasant experience.
eg. 8,04 becomes FE0,FF0000 (assuming 3-digit syntax is allowed) and when using non-256 colour then we end up with codes like A849E2,589204. Doesn't exactly roll off the fingers does it?

- If 3-digit syntax is allowed, then the age-old problem we have with current colour codes comes back with a vengeance. Whereas once the problem was limited to numbers like 410 being interpreted dfferently from the users intentions, it now becomes a problem for hex.
How many times do you think this problem would be brought up in these forums?
'I typed "It's a AFAfabulous idea" and it came out the wrong colour!'

There are probably plenty more issues, but these just happen to be the ones that occurred to me while I posted.