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Posted By: DJ_Sol Italics font code - 24/09/10 12:08 AM
Now that mIRC supports italicized text, I'd like to be able to echo italicized text in a channel window. I am used to typing ctrl + b for bold, or ctrl + u for underline and getting a font style box. Now when I do that in the script editor using mIRC7.1, I don't see a box for underline or italics. I do see one for bold.

How do you make your text italics using echo?

/echo -a Text
Posted By: Riamus2 Re: Italics font code - 24/09/10 01:37 AM
The character you see for a ctrl code depends on your fonts and language pack(s) installed on your system. It is not unusual to see no character for them in unicode. Even before 7.x, there were possible setups that would make the invisible. Note that they still work even if you don't see the code. It just makes editing them more difficult.

Similar to that, in earlier mIRC versions, some system setups show a square box as the ctrl code and some show various rotations/flips of "L" shaped symbols. Sometimes ctrl-O is a hashed box symbol.

It would be nice for mIRC to display a different character than what the ctrl code character appears like in unicode so that it would be visible. That would require some extra behind-the-scenes work for mIRC, but would be beneficial. In the meantime, just use the codes and they'll work normally even if you can't see them.
Posted By: DJ_Sol Re: Italics font code - 24/09/10 03:53 AM
Thanks. Yeah I changed the font to arial and they were still gone so I wasn't sure. Nice to know it still works.
Posted By: jaytea Re: Italics font code - 24/09/10 05:53 AM
you could, of course, also use $chr(29)
Posted By: Thels Re: Italics font code - 24/09/10 01:45 PM
I recall they all used to be boxes to me a long time ago, and one time half of them became invisible.

I've eventually decided for myself simply not to use them in scripts anymore, and instead use the $chr codes inside my code, which makes it a lot easier to see when displaying to other users.

2 = bold, 3 = color, 15 = plain, 22 = reverse, 29 = italic, 31 = underline.

EDIT:

Originally Posted By: Riamus2
It would be nice for mIRC to display a different character than what the ctrl code character appears like in unicode so that it would be visible. That would require some extra behind-the-scenes work for mIRC, but would be beneficial. In the meantime, just use the codes and they'll work normally even if you can't see them.


Not sure if that would be a smart thing to do. What if others would be using those unicode characters? Perhaps having constant identifiers such as $b, $c, $i, $p, $r and $u could help?

Posted By: Riamus2 Re: Italics font code - 25/09/10 02:17 AM
As long as mIRC tracks it behind the scenes, it can display a different character and yet if someone typed that character, it wouldn't be treated as a control code. Obviously, you'd want to use a set of characters that made sense and were unlikely to be regularly used just so it isn't as confusing, but something like that would be easy enough to make optional so users can choose to display them as they are now or as something else. For example, there are unicode characters where a circle surrounds the letters b, k, u, o, r. That might work very well and users could still use those characters in their scripts if they wanted regardless of how they set that optional setting. Anyhow, it's not a simple thing, but I still think it would be useful.
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