Talk:MIRC/Archive 1

Recent Links Removed
I removed the scripts that were in the Links section. I think it is silly to link to two specific scripts out of the thousands of scripts that exist. It is much more sensible (as is now the case) to link to websites which offer a number of mIRC resources and are well known in the community. Linking to specific scripts sets apart those scripts from all others, which is not objective as Wikipedia aims to be.
 * Mentality 20:39, 17th May 2005 (UTC)

mIRC Name?
Can someone clue me in to what the m in mIRC stands for? Is it like the m in mRNA (messenger RNA)? Does it mean messenger IRC? That would make sense.


 * Well, according to Khaled, m stands for ":)". What that's supposed to mean, who knows? I bet he just picked a random letter that sounded nice   &mdash; Kieff | Talk 05:29, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

The 'm' in mIRC stands for mu.
 * Source, anonymous? TrbleClef 03:06, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * It has not been said what the 'm' in mIRC stands for. Khaled SUGGESTS in his FAQ that it could stand for 'MU' (The Chinese idiom for 'nothing') or moo. I don't think it stands for anything, but all there is related to the 'm' is speculation.

Mentality 20:39, 17th May 2005 (UTC)


 * I always thought it referred to his surname, mardam. Therefore making it mardam's IRC.

Streetkid 12:349, 11th July 2005 (UTC)


 * I've always thought that the "m" turned the pronunciation of the whole name into "my-are-see", like a contraction of "my" and "IRC". That may or may not be right, but that's how I've always pronounced it :-). --BigglesZX 08:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * "My Arse"? õ_o ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 10:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

as taken from the IRC faq : Question: What does the 'm' in mIRC stand for? Answer: It quite possibly stands for 'moo', or perhaps even MU. personally i always tought it stood for 'moderate' but i can't seem to remember why i tought that... Killah 22:38, 17th January 2006 (GMT)

I clearly remember (if one can clearly remember after 12 years) that mIRC stood for "my IRC" as it said in the original 1995 FAQ which has long since disappeared. Landroo 15:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It's possible you're correct (although the mind does funny things with 12 year old memories), but without a verifiable source it can't really be included in the article. The Wayback Machine only goes back to Nov. 1996 for the mirc.co.uk mIRC FAQ which doesn't appear to make any mention of it. A quick search of the alt.irc.mirc newsgroup doesn't provide anything useful either. - ExNihilo 17:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Firstly, I see no reason why Khaled would have stated this in one FAQ and then changed his answer. That said, not all his actions are exactly self explanatory. Secondly though, such information is impossible to cite unless you can use some sort of archive search engine like the Way Back Machine on archive.org to find that information. His personal website (which the WBM only has records back to 2002) has always stated the information specified in the article. Mentality 17:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * As clearly stated somewhere in mIRC.com, The "M" stand for "Moo". There is no apparent reason. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.27.198 (talk) 07:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Popular Scripts & Easter Eggs
Is it okay to add in popular scripts and easter eggs about this program?

Here are the 5 most popular scripts for mIRC ever:
 * 1) 7th sphere
 * 2) Peace And Protection
 * 3) ircN
 * 4) Static Orange
 * 5) Basic

Another good script is the NoName script by greeny.

Also, some easter eggs:
 * 1) Go to Help, About, and type 'Arnie', Khaled's photo will morph into a crocodile.
 * 2) Go to Help, About, and click on the mIRC logo, the oldschool one will appear.
 * 3) Go to Help, About, and right-click the word 'mIRC' in the line 'Copyright (c) 1995-2000 mIRC CO LTD.' and a dot will bounce on mIRC's "i".


 * I don't think that those are necessary in an article. You could add that, though, wouldn't harm, but cite your sources about the scripts. About the easter eggs, don't put them on, that'd be silly :P.   &mdash; Kieff | Talk 06:41, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

I have added some easter eggs Tbere 20:38, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Where is the Wiki mIRC room? Lirath Q. Pynnor
 * There is no such thing as an "mIRC room". What you are probably thinking of are IRC channels. This is #wikipedia on Freenode. MadEwokHerd 20:38, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Possible idea to include in the article
For the mIRC users out there, just this piece of advice I received from a friend. If you, like a majority of irc users, find that you've been using your client for more than a year or so, go ahead and register it. It's made some sort of impact on your life, usually entertaining, otherwise you wouldn't be using it. $20 bucks isn't a huge amount of money, and it certainly is an incentive to Khaled to keep the updates coming. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside too. Also, another mIRC easter egg is found by right mouse button clicking the 'about mIRC' button, all kinds of silly messages come from this. It seems to give you a bit of insight as to Khaled Mardam-Bey's personality. - Anonymous
 * I don't see how this would fit in this (or any) article... It's like saying "Go ahead, buy it". Wikipedia should be informative, not suggestive. About the easter egg, there's a lot more, but no point to add them all here ~either :)   &mdash; Kieff | Talk 05:34, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Suggestions
Hi there. I don't mean to nitpick this article, but in the interest of factual accuracy i would like to clear up a few things. Firstly, it's too hard for me to edit articles given the system I use, and the browser I use. I hope someone can implement my suggestions, as follows: 1) "a invisible user" should be "an invisible user" 2) "You cannot tell whether or not [double negative?] a[n] invisible user is on a channel unless you join that channel" - This is worded ambiguously, as it's entirely possible to see what channels an invisible user is on. /whois them. what is meant here is that when you request a list of names from a channel, invisible users don't show up. 3) In a moderated channel, ops and voices can speak, not just voices. (on most networks you can be +vo, +o or +v to talk in a moderated channel).


 * "Be bold in editing pages." You should edit it yourself if you see something wrong with it. --Antoshi 20:49, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of suggestions, the entire "Main features" section as well as "Common criticisms" need to be completely removed and perhaps replaced with something else.

Most of the criticisms have nothing to do with the program itself. (since when is user gullibility the domain of any one program? Seen one of those "virus" warning e-mails lately that tells you to delete system files from your Windows directory? Same applies to the "criticism" about newbies referring to IRC as mIRC chat -- what is Khaled supposed to do? "I'm sorry everybody uses my program, I'll write something immediately to straighten out all those noobs who annoy you "veteran IRC users")

The features section is not quite as bad. CTCP support shouldn't even need mentioning, else you should also start mentioning things like "query windows" and "integrated nick lists" and "separate channel windows". Firewall should probably be renamed to proxy, it's a misnomer that has stuck around mIRC's options dialog for ages. "Speech recognition via third party products" -- how can this even be considered a feature of mIRC?

Additionally, in the intro paragraph, it is arguable that "web page parser" and "game platform" and so forth, if not the entire idea of using it as a "highly configurable tool" for anything other than IRC tasks are as misguided as the people using it for those selfsame things. Sure, there are scripts along those lines, but I don't know of (m)any people yet who download mIRC solely to use as an mp3 player.

I'd be editing this myself but I really have no idea where to start and my opinion is probably a little biased. I hope someone takes this to heart and cleans this thing up a little bit, it looks like a high school English assignment where the author filled in the bullets with junk items solely to make them look long. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.35.169.183 (talk • contribs) 19:50 5 August 2006

troutslap?
where did this originally come from? somebody once told me it's a monty python reference? (clem 12:28, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC))

Slap
I think the slap thingy is a bit.. useless, it doesn't really have anything to do with the client (it's just in a default script), and it's not specific to mIRC --unattributed

it still deserves a mention. for about a year, you couldn't have a convorsation on IRC without seeing this line. I think it rates as a littlepiece of pop cuture, offered up by this software --Threatis 07:40, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

as someone who has been slapped and has slapped quite a few times, it deserves mention --Nick Catalano contrib talk 20:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Note that The Fish-Slapping Dance article has now-dead anchor-link to MIRC#Slap.21_function. It would be better to check for brocken links when removing sections... I was a little confused when clicked on this. 217.117.80.2 (talk) 18:47, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Scripting
OK, as to the example in the article which shows example of && (and) and || (or): on *:TEXT:*:#:{ if ($1 == $me $+ ?) && ( ($chan == #wiki) || ($chan == #wiki.en) ) { msg $chan I'm here, $nick $+ ! } }

There isn't even a need to use those operators to get the desired effect:

on *:TEXT:$($me $+ ?):#wiki,#wiki.en:{ msg $chan I'm here, $nick $+ ! }

However, if it's changed, someone will have to come up with new examples of && and ||.

Though I doubt anyone will be learning actual scripting from this article. The current example is not actually the best in real life, but it shows how easy it is to use && and || - Contributed by Brax@Undernet via    nath  a  nrdotcom  ( T •  C  • W) 02:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Also ? in a "wildcard match" isn't the same as ? in a exact phrase match - so they aren't really equal. --62.220.161.10 08:47, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

What pong game?
In easter eggs section: "Left-click on the left-most button on the status bar five times while holding Shift to load the built-in pong game."

Where is the status bar in mIRC meant to be? Is this a joke that someone added?

Well mIRC doesn't even have anything that is called a Status Bar, it only has; Switch Bar, Tree Bar, Menu Bar and Tool Bar. So even if it did exist it's a pretty vague description. --62.220.161.10 06:28, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

mIRC Co. Ltd. links to mIRC!
Why does Mirc Co Ltd link to mirc when it's on the same page?

Changes made as of 16th April 07
I have re-written the main features section as suggested above. I've left criticisms alone for now. I concentrated two main paragraphs to what I see as the most widely used specific features and then a summary of various others. It seems to look better than a list that mentioned silly things like CTCP support. I've also made minor changes to the easter eggs section as there was a duplicate in there. I've also changed the mIRC homepage link to .com rather than .co.uk, that seems more appropriate, and added a link to Khaled's homepage.

If anyone disagrees with these changes, please let me know here <3 Mentality 11:13, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a good start to getting away from the bullet-point mentality that the article has. I've made a few changes, removed a few of the asides that I felt were unnecessary, which I think makes it easier to follow now. Also I changed the mIRC homepage link back to .com - I know .co.uk used to be the true "official site" however I don't think that's the case anymore, particularly since the internal links in mIRC go to .com in the newer versions (ie. from the Help menu and About dialog). I think more changes are needed, right now I'm not too happy with the way the major paragraph of the "main features" section is about the scripting language, then there's a few smaller paragraphs, then a whole section dedicated to the scripting language again. Plus a whole article dedicated to the subject. I think it'd be best if the comments about $decode and malware were all put into the "mIRC scripting" section and removed from the paragraph in "main features". ExNihilo 14:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Is the latest revision better? Mentality 14:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I've also re-written the Criticism section. Please feel free to... well, criticise it! Mentality 14:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

UTF-8
mIRC seems to have only partial UTF-8 support. It can display others' messages in UTF-8, but cannot send them in UTF-8 - messages are always sent in the system encoding. - Sikon 07:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

It supports both encoding/decoding UTF-8. Related settings are in mIRC Options -> IRC -> Messages and the /font dialog. 149.254.192.195 21:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

ipv6
mIRC doesn't natively supports ipv6 protocols. It could be enabled by adding a external DLL plugin who will enable a special protocol for DNS and connecting to ipv6 servers.

Somehow freeware?
Having owned a copy of mIRC for quite some time, I - and unsurprisingly many others - have noticed that mIRC can still be used to chat even after the 30-day trial runs out. Is this is a bug in the program, or is this like WinRAR, where only certain parts of are unlocked when purchased fully? undefined N  a  N  21:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You just get the annoying splash screen, that's it. It's still meant to function, and nothing is locked. - Jigsy 00:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The New UI: Still Not 'New'?
The so called "new" UI in mIRC 6.31 is nothing more than updating the icons, it still doesn't have a "Vista" like user interface, such as the Microsoft Office 2007 user interface. Its like re-painting a car that is green yellow, its still the same car. Wikinerd2000 02:40, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I changed 'completely new' to 'updated' since I feel it fits a bit better. If anyone disagrees, feel free to change it back. Regards. Rhykin (talk) 04:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Khaled's article
Recently, the Khaled Mardam-Bey article has been redirected to mIRC. I'm surprised no one has undid that. I tried looking for it in the article's talk page, as well as here. No consensus is reached. Should we decide? (Originally posted by me on 13:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC).) Neal (talk) 20:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC).
 * The article was essentially a collection of personal trivia culled directly from Mardam-Bey's homepage. If people want to read about Mardam-Bey's personal life, they are free to visit his homepage; that's what homepages are for. Mardam-Bey has no notability outside of mIRC, so he doesn't deserve his own article. And since he is apparently a private person, it is in the spirit of WP:BLP to not have an article dedicated to him. Punctured Bicycle (talk) 13:21, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I personally find it interesting it didn't happen sooner considering that Robey Pointer, creator of the Eggdrop, had his article removed due to him being considered non-notable, yet Khaled Mardam-Bey's article remained for as long a period as it did. Seems that creating Eggdrop, a program which maintains channels on networks across the world and operates both on all major operating systems as itself, as well as being accessible via Telnet from any operating with such capability, would have been considered far more notable than an IRC client that just operates on one operating system. 76.212.103.238 (talk) 07:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Criticism 1
The comment about mircs looks being outdated doesn't really make sense since its a base program designed to be changed and edited by the user or users hence scripting you are able to literally change the whole look of the program.and therefore making it look as updated as you want I find a lot of scripts acutally make it look too "pretty" but to I still won't use a standard version. (by 74.13.83.114 on 18:56, 21 May 2007).

Criticism 2
mIRC-style text decorations and colors are not part of the IRC standard, but because of the program's popularity, competing IRC clients have been forced to include them in their program, although support sometimes ranges only to dumping the formatting entirely

How can it possibly be considered a criticism? It's not Khaled's fault if his program is famous... Do you mind if i remove it? --Swalot 23:12, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not his fault the program is successful, but it's his fault he implemented a new and ill-conceived method of formatting text without consulting any other IRC client authors despite an existing colour protocol having been implemented previously. Perhaps the criticism should be re-worded though since it's not the fact that it isn't part of the IRC standard that's the issue, the issue is that he implemented a new colouring method apprently just for the sake of it (Ircle Colour FAQ). -- ExNihilo 22:01, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The IRC standard is described by RFC1459. It, as you say, does not account for use of color. So all color implementations are by definition non-standard. And while it is well know the mIrc does not comply to the defacto standard that arose, I'm not sure that it is a valid criticism on it's own merit without a further discussion to provide context. I would not object to either the expansion of the criticism, or removal thereof. Oorang (talk) 06:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Onno Tijdgat, author of IRCle, criticizes mIRC's color format, arguing that it uses a flawed design and follows no common standard.

Uh, is that really a criticism? Besides that, it also seems irrelevant. The default mIRC doesn't use colors for nicks. I suppose the criticism is directed at the default Alt K colors? Because that's not really important either. I'd see relevant criticism on the functions, features, integrated scripting language, and the design. Etc. Neal (talk) 13:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC).


 * He's criticizing the ctrl+k codes, their poor design and choice of colors. He's not alone. Where did you get the "nick colors" context from? It has nothing to do with this. &mdash; Kieff | Talk 14:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with the 8 basic colors? I agree some other 8 are more random. Neal (talk) 18:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC).


 * Ah okay, he's requesting mIRC has more colors. That's something worthy of being specific to mention, right? Neal (talk) 18:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC).


 * Seriously, its his program, If he wants to add extra features, is it really an issue? I mean, how many SERVERS follow the RFC 1459 to the exact protocol?
 * What would life be like with only two channel modes for users (+@). 123.243.27.198 (talk) 07:19, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It isn't an issue, it's a criticism. And legit. Neal (talk) 00:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC).


 * The confusion here is the wording of the section leads the reader to believe the criticism is centered mostly on mIRC's color coding being non standard.  In reality the criticism is that mIRC's color code has become the standard even though it's clearly flawed.  Competing products are forced to "guess" what mIRC would do instead of having a clear cut way to implement the "mIRC color standard".  I will try to edit the wording to reflect this better but someone more adept at such things should probably go over it. 65.27.0.10 (talk) 09:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Khaled's personal response

For the sake of historical disambiguity (since this issue has a tendency to pop up every decade or so) here is my take on the color format criticism, to put it into context.

While I was designing the color format, I discussed the issue with a fair number of people, including the authors of various IRC clients. There were already several proprietary color formats in use, none of which were compatible with each other. So there was no actual standard. Each IRC client author had created their own format and I had to decide whether to use one of the existing color formats or to come up with my own. Either way, I would have annoyed those clients that didn't use that particular format.

At the time, making mIRC as user-friendly as possible was my priority. So I decided to use a format that was simple. It didn't use hex and it didn't require any complex formatting. Any new or non-technical user could use it without thinking twice. I think it achieved that objective.

In retrospect, the design should have been more robust. And perhaps I should have separated the actual format from the input method. I could still have used a six digit hex format, to support a wide range of colors, while using a color input dialog for easy input (which was added to mIRC later, if I recall correctly).

Regarding my Wikipedia article: It does seem a little odd that the page was removed, it had been there for long time, perhaps years? But that is how Wikipedia works - it takes one person with an opinion to rewrite history. It's both worrying and refreshing at the same time!

End Neal (talk) 14:59, 31 January 2008 (UTC).