If you have ever used mIRC, regardless the version, you've seen the following screen.


You are a new user and only used IRC thru a web client, you are going to find these all to be blank. And you see the email option. And you really think you need to enter an email address. Something you've never needed to before. Would you? Considering that an IRC server *never* asks for your email address, why would this application be asking for it?

And then of course, you have the following screen...


What's an IDENTD ? Why does it say I use UNIX? I don't know my USERID?!? Am I the only one that fins all this confusing?

Apparently not...

https://forums.mirc.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=220057

https://forums.mirc.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=219720

https://forums.mirc.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=219693

Having a separate configuration devoted for "identd" which even uber geeks don't care about that conflicts with misleading information filled in the "Connection" configuration window leads to confusion. The help file says "don't change" these settings so why have a dedicated config screen for it. If they wanna change it use the /identd command.

And Email should obviously be renamed "Username" or "User ID" and by default filled with the %USERNAME environmental variable. Not left blank.

This bugs me! Hence I am filing it as a Bug Report! My logical is flawless!

As far as identd is concerned, consider reading this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ident#Uses

If you look at the beta version, email and real name are listed as optional now, so that solves your first issue.

As far as identd, that's part of the RFC, I believe, so it's not something mIRC can change the name of just to make it more clear. It's not something that usually needs to be changed, but there's nothing wrong with it being there for those who want it changed.

If people don't know what a setting is, they can easily check the help file or ask. There's no reason why anyone should remain confused about settings if they take the time to do so. I don't see any reason to remove them.

I read it... have you this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ident#NPOV_vs_.22Usefulness_of_Ident.22

In any case I never said disable identd, i said leave it enabled and do away w/ the configuration screen.

It doesn't matter whether you think it's useful or not. Unless it's removed from RFC, mIRC will support it. It's not mIRC's job to make changes to what server software requires or uses. If you have a problem with identd, start bugging those whose job it is to decide whether or not to keep it instead.

Omigod... this is not about REMOVING IDENTD SUPPORT! Identd support is intended to be TRANSPARENT! The way it is now it's not transparent at all! Your USER login and USER IDENTD should ALWAYS match. You've never read the RFC have you?

As mentioned, the name and email field now contain the words (optional) in v7.0 to make it clear to users that they do not need to enter these.

As for identd, the identd options are there because users have asked for them. Take a look at this recent bug report relating to identd. Not only is that user depending on both the email and identd user fields but they are also depending on a subtle behaviour with how mIRC chooses the email over the identd userid.

In addition, if I enabled identd permanently some users might say that they are running their own identd server and do not want mIRC interfering with it, or that they want to specify a different userid.

I agree that having these options makes mIRC more complicated for non-technical users. I plan on making the interface more new-user friendly over the next few versions, although I am not sure how I am going to do that yet.

Perhaps you could put everything that most people don't need to configure under an "Advanced" branch in the Options?

Or even remove some options from the options dialog altogether and implement a firefox-esque property system. Firefox lets you change almost every single thing it does, but you have to do so by going to about:config and editing a list of option name/value pairs. Here's a picture of it:

I'd prefer an adanced section in the options or else a better worded config page. I've seen Firefox's config section and a few other apps that have a very similar config section. I've never liked them because unless you want to go searching through help for every option, you usually aren't going to know what many of them do. If we can't do just an advanced tree in options that have settings set up like mIRC's normal settings are, then I would hope the wording of the settings in a list like this would make sense without having to check to see what each is for.

Opera has had such a config page for a long time now. It's definately meant for the people who either know what they are looking for, or want to do something advanced which makes them willing to read up on it in a manual.

in the case of Opera too, most often all options are worded clearly but not always indeed. Though I find the Opera version a lot clearer compared to Firefox

Sometimes it's not always possible to give a usable but also descriptive name.

For example, compare "join.delay" to "join.delay_between_joining_each_channel" - a hypothetical property for allowing us to set a delay between joining each channel in the /join command.

Of course Khaled will probably go in a completely different direction with mIRC, but I like the fact that Firefox supports both a simple options dialog, and an advanced one for fine-tuning.

Simply merging "email" with "ident" would be a good start.

Replace the email field with "ident". The ident field would now be server connection specific, so /server -i would set ident rather than email. Then remove the ident field from the identd tab (the identd tab would only control whether it was enabled and port). You could also just remove the identd tab and have an [Advanced...] button to the right of the new ident field in connect.

This won't work unfortunately - when identd was first added, users specifically asked for an identd userid that was separate from the email address field. See my previous reply for a situation where a user is actually depending on both of these being different.

You wouldn't have to enable identd permanently. I didn't suggest to permanently enable it. You would simply have mIRC behave as if "[x] Use ID from email address" was always checked, then remove the global ident userid box. They could still disable ident, but it would always take the id from the (old) email field (which would be called ident field or something). This makes it easier to configure multi-server connections with separate userids rather than having to manually modify the options to make it possible.

The user in that bug report is not depending on the multiple fields out of necessity, but rather because "that's how it's setup". His setup could easily change (as I suggested in that bug report) and he would achieve the same results. In fact, what I suggested was exactly what I'm suggesting now. If mIRC only had one ident field he would not have had that issue in the first place-- his problem actually stemmed from the fact that mIRC was using one field and not the other, and he only wanted it to use one field.

Let me try again - at one time, mIRC did not have a separate identd userid. It used the userid from the email address field for identd replies. Users then asked for a separate, independent identd server with a separate identd userid. So I added that option. This option has now been a part of mIRC for a very long time. It will not be possible to remove it without negatively affecting users who depend on it.

Why not have a tool tip for the identd and other fields that a user can change, it would make it easyer for new users to see what to fill in..

Perhaps a compromise, then, could be at least renaming the "email" field to "user id" or "ident" and no longer requiring the a@b syntax. At least that would make it more clear as to its purpose.

FYI: It doesn't require the @ sign anymore.

I do think maybe changing the name of the field to something else would help avoid confusion and indicate what the field really affects.

How about following the IRC RFC's terminology and call it "Username"? This should be understood as "ident" for those who only need ident, and for those who have more complex login mechanisms (where the username field in the USER message actually has significance besides identd) should also understand what it means. Of course it would still be optional, so having this field empty would default to the global identd value (or the current nick if neither is specified).

Just adding the "optional" text should bring the number of confused people down. For the moment, that's enough of a change.

However, I too would like to see it use RFC's terminology in another update. If anything, just to keep things consistent between Mirc and the RFC's.

Did you read my original post? The first link points straight to that bug report. And I said disable the UI configuration and rely on the /identd command for alternate usernames for identd and the IRC server.



Why don't you take a look at how every other IRC client does it...

I should remind you that it's already broken as is. Since it's not multi-connection a where.

Thank you all for your comments on this issue.