Is there a way to change the default display of mIRC's text (as far as messages go)?
instead of:could it be changed to or other such outputs without the use of scripts and the re-defining of alises (its a messy business doing it by script)?

While I also think something like this should be possible to customize built-in mIRC, right now it is quite easy to script.

If you would use the Search Feature you would find countless threads that deal with this, for example here

You can also look on scripting sites for addons using MTS/XTS theme engines which basically are a script that loads preformatted themes and does all the work of changing the display for every event on mIRC to a "themed" version. These sites also contain section where people post their own themes for others to use.

what's so messy about

on ^*:TEXT:*:#:echo -mblirt # [[ $+ $nick $+ ]] $1- | haltdef

?

It strips multiple spaces and doesn't work for your own text, and didn't you forget the -f switch?

I'd suggest an improvement to the timestamp dialog to somehow include colors and nickname position and such, so you can do strange stuff like
HH:nn (°$nick°) (ss)
to get your nick with all kinds of ascii art crap somewhere around or inside your timestamp. Yes, I forgot to add colors, choose your own and add them


The 'how do I change my <nick> to [nick]?' question comes around often enough I'd say...

well
timestampfmt is not the place to hold $nick information

for instance: //echo -at hello world

or //msg # the time is $timestamp

Again, its a simple one line script to change the nick format
if you want to keep spaces, $replace($gettok($rawmsg,2-,58),$chr(32),$chr(2) $chr(2))

Now modify the msg command to also include your message formatting (dont forget to account for the fact that /msg also works for DCC Chat), then also modify /say... see how messy it can get

Use an Addon like this and you don't have to think about how it works or looks...