When you move your cursor/mouse over a nickname in a #chatroom, there is usually a finger that pops up and indicates you can right-click and get information or perform commands, etc. We've all seen this before.

When, however, you script your own channel appearance, add your own settings for how nicknames look, etc., you quickly lose that automatic finger whenever you move your cursor over the nickname.

Example:
<MegaZeroX> will still see a finger popup.
*MegaZeroX* still...
(MegaZeroX) still...

BUT <<MegaZeroX>> will not
**MegaZeroX** will not
^^MegaZeroX^^ will not.

Thus begins the "two character rule" - mIRC will have a finger available for all nicknames as long as there is no more than one character on either side of the nickname. (One more character is 'tolerated' for !@%+ mode prefixes).

If you think about it, ON HOTLINK or whatever the event is would have to be scripted for each and every nickname that it applies to. Or would it?

I'm wondering if anybody has any ideas on how I might script something that would allow us to keep the FINGER after adding more than one symbol to either side of the nickname.

Well how does mIRC know what the actual nick is?
^^MegaZeroX^^

That is a valid nickname.

[17:54] * Your nick is now ^^MegaZeroX^^

So when you specify that, how should mIRC know you mean MegaZeroX and not ^^MegaZeroX^^? It's not mIRCs fault you're doing it wrong...

I'm not sure whether you skimmed this board hoping to find places to make smartass replies, but if thats the case, please do so elsewhere. You're scaring away smart people with smart ideas.

I'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm looking for a method by which to correctly identify words as people in a #room regardless of what the borders are for the so-called "namestamps."

This would allow a hotlink event to fuction regardless of the <, <<, (, [, or whatever symbol someone uses (in color or not in color - it wouldn't matter).

Please read the topic next time.

Sorry I decided to post an honest reply rather than stroke your rather large ego. If you don't like the help I provide, I really don't care, I won't help you, in fact, after seeing your attitude, I hope no one helps you. [moderator bleep] It's not my fault you have no idea what you're doing. How should mIRC know that ^ is a border? ^ IS A VALID NICKNAME CHARACTER. How should mIRC know [ is a border? [ IS A VALID NICKNAME CHARCTER.

If you don't understand IRC (which you don't) thats not my problem. Now I hope anytime you ask for help someone elses knows the answer, because I sure as hell won't ever try and help you again.

There is no need to be rude. codemastr raised a valid question. if you dont consider it valid or within the framework of your question, you can disagree/explain with common courtesy rather than insults.

Parabrat, I'm sorry to hear you think I am 'at fault' here, considering he implied that I didn't know what I was doing. You might be surprised to find out that not everyone with 13 posts on this board is a newbie to mIRC. I do know what I'm doing, which is part of the reason I was able to develop a solution to the problem without the help of either of you.

Edit: codemastr, I'm still quite confident that if you had actually my original post, you would understand what this was about. It had literally nothing to do with what your #2 post focused on.

Good day, gentlemen.

I fail to see how asking someone to exercise courtesy has any implication about their experience with mIRC.

Altho i'm not a "gentleman" (you might be surprised to find out that it isnt only males who post here), i am glad that you found a solution to the problem.

And for those people in the far future that run across this thread looking for an actual answer.. you can pad a nickname/channel name with 2 self cancelling control codes.

Example: instead of **JoeBob** just use **^b^bJoeBob^b^b**.

^b being control + b, the bold character, not visible when doubled and not obstructive in the recognition of the nickname by the "FINGER thing".

A fair question. As the "finger" hovers over words in the window, mIRC scans through the nicknames/notify/etc. list to try to find matches for that word. If it finds that the word is a nickname, its a match. If the word is surrounded by non-alphanumeric characters, mIRC strips the first set away to see if it can find a nickname match. It's not a foolproof method but seems to work for most situations