Table of Contents
imgmirc.dll is an add-on for mIRC with 3 main features:
Perl-compatible regular expression (PCRE) highlighting, which is intended to be used mainly for mIRC highlighting under non-english locales (case-insensitive too). Look through the overview or learn how it works in more details.
In this v0.29 BETA release, non-english highlighting is
temporarily broken, when working with mIRC versions over 7.0.
Also, due to unicode support in mIRC, internal highlighting
pattern (so called %hl_mainstr) is now composed
from 6 ASCII characters (which might cause spurious highlights,
though rarely).
Drawing smileys images over textual smileys, similar to trillian. Look through the overview , or learn how it works.
Substituting custom quit messages upon mIRC closing, similar to bitchx. Look through the overview, or learn how it works.
Main changes made in imgmirc v0.29beta:
mIRC 7.0 and 7.10 supported.
Sources were refactored a little bit.
No PCRE library version 8.10 is used.
Since it's a BETA release, some features might be broken. Also, it was tested only on mIRC 7.10 and Windows 7 for now.
Main changes made in imgmirc v0.28s:
mIRC 6.35 supported.
Main changes made in imgmirc v0.27s:
mIRC 6.34 supported.
Sources are now to be compiled with MSVC 2005.
Main changes made in imgmirc v0.26s:
Sources are included in the distributive (sources were not changed since v0.26).
Added "known issues" section into the manual, kind of a FAQ.
Main changes made in imgmirc v0.26:
Bug related to managing tcp/ip packets during pcre highlighting fixed.
Keep alive system changed, related mIRC timer removed.
Main changes made in imgmirc v0.25:
Transparent smileys drawing implemented. Useful when mIRC windows have non-white (or non-monochromatic) background.
GUI configuration dialog. All imgmirc tuning is performed now through dialog instead of manual editing of mIRC variables.
PCRE library package now linked statically with imgmirc.dll (v0.21 used dynamic linking).
imgmirc v0.29beta was specifically tested to work with mIRC version 7.10 on Windows 7. It should work with other mIRC/Windows versions, except for Windows 95.
With imgmirc, your favorite native mIRC highlighting can be achieved
for any perl-compatible regex pattern. Customization of patterns is done
via manual editing of 'imgmirc/highlights.txt' file. Each
line (except the first one) of the file is a regexp pattern you want to be
highlighted. Regular expressions support is implemented by PCRE library by Philip Hazel.
NOTE: On the format of imgmirc/highlights.txt file: the very first line should contain a number of patterns in the file because the file is parsed by a mIRC script.
For correct highlighting, each pattern must looks like this:
^[^\xa]*?(foobar)[^\x1\xd]*
where 'foobar' is the word you want to be highlighted. If you want several words to be highlighted, you can add one more line to the file (don't forget to increment the number in the first line), but it is recommended to simply modify an existing line in the following way:
^[^\xa]*?(foobar|blah)[^\x1\xd]*
If you want, for example, to case-insensitively highlight the word 'blah', use line like this:
^[^\xa]*?(foobar|(?i)blah)[^\x1\xd]*
Note '(?i)' used for case-insensitiveness. And so
on.
NOTE: Run 'man perlre' on any *NIX box to get
great manual on perl-compatible regilar expressions.
List of patterns can be viewed in mIRC by invoking an alias command
'/im_hllist'. You can switch regexp highlighting on and off
in imgmirc configurator dialog.
imgmirc.dll is statically linked with the PCRE library package,
written by Philip Hazel (see copyrights
section), which allows it to perform PCRE highlighting. When a
text message matching one of patterns is received by mIRC, imgmirc
appends several special symbols to the end of the line to be
highlighted, but hides these symbols from a screen later. Generally
speaking, "several special symbols" are contents of mIRC variable
%hl_mainstr set by imgmirc, total 3 symbols in length.
Therefore, if you customize mIRC to highlight every
%hl_mainstr occurence (i.e., add "%hl_mainstr"
without quotations to the mIRC highlights list) through
Options->Irc->Highlight
, or (in mIRC 6.34 for example),
Tools->Address Book->Highlight
, and configure highlighting behaviour as you like to, you achieve
native mIRC highlighting for your custom regexp pattern. The value of
%hl_mainstr changes automatically every time imgmirc.dll is
loaded by mIRC (read - every time mIRC starts).
NOTE: Such highlighting method has a drawback: every line in the log file which coressponds to a highlighted line in the mIRC will have the value of %hl_mainstr appended to the end. Usually it looks like strange symbols near the line end (in the log file only). For this cost achieved the highlighting which works just the same way as native mIRC highlighting does.
imgmirc.dll can draw graphical images for corresponding smileys over text, so the result looks similar to trillian.
NOTE: Smileys supplied with imgmirc package are kind of optimised for 'Courier New 14' font. Altough default smileys images work with another fonts/sizes too, it is possible to change images if you don't like how smileys looks (learn how).
List of smileys replacements can be viewed in mIRC by issuing an
alias command '/im_relist' (looks pretty ugly btw, try and
you'll understand why :). Again, you can turn off smileys feature through
imgmirc configurator dialog.
There was a change in version v0.25 related to smileys drawing. I've noticed many people use non-white background in mIRC windows, and therefore smileys (by default painted on white background) looks ugly for them, revealing frames around smileys themselves. It is possible to workaround this problem by editing smileys images, but of course, nobody wants to deal with it. Moreover, it is not a solution at all in the case of using non-monochromatic background like some sort of a picture. So, imgmirc since v0.25 is able to draw transparent images. Transparent color for smileys is white RGB(255,255,255).
NOTE: Of course, transparent drawing works slightly slower than default non-transparent. So, if your background mIRC windows color is the same as that of the smileys images, better turn transparent option off. It can be done through imgmirc configurator dialog.
NOTE: Basic understanding of Perl-compatible regular expressions is required to alter configuration files discussed below.
There is a directory 'imgmirc/imgs' created when
imgmirc were installed. It contains bitmap images of smiles
(*.bmp files) and a list of regexp patterns
(replacements.txt file). Each regexp pattern is associated
with an image to be drawn. Every line of that file must look like
this:
(blah)#image.bmp#0#0#20#20 optional_comment
In this example, a fragment of image.bmp with
coordinates (0, 0) and size (20, 20) is
selected to be drawn over the text 'blah' when it is about
to appear on the screen. By altering replacements.txt file
you can set up you own smileys list.
The pattern used above, '(blah)', is actually a
regexp pattern. For example, to replace ':-)' smiley, we
use this line (note backslashes and parentheses):
(\:-?\))#3block.bmp#0#0#20#20 smile
Actual text under the smiley image is replaced with spaces (in case of non-transparent drawing), or is not printed at all (in case of transparent drawing) to make sure it will not be cut out. If the text dimensions is too small for the smiley to fit, the image will be stretched down, but image will not be stretched to increase its dimensions, because it looks ugly then.
Font i'm used to use is Courier New 14, thus I get images for font of size 14 (btw, these are the trillian default images, and they look pretty cool). Also they look not very terrible even being stretched to fixedsys font :) Also, it's better to use monospacing font, because in the case of non-monospacing font the problem of modifying string in order to be sure every 'slot' will correctly fit every occured smiley seems to be too complicated. At least I'm too lazy to solve it :)
imgmirc can use random message from a pre-defined list as your 'quit
reason' then you quit from IRC. No matter, how exactly you do the quit, by
clicking on the 'close window' button, or by pressing 'alt+f4'. This
option turned on/off through 'perform /im_allquit...'
checkbox in the imgmirc configurator
dialog.
Next section explains how to modify custom messages set.
Custom quit messages list is stored in a file
'imgmirc/quit_msgs.txt', each line of which contains quit
message. Also there are some aliases in your mIRC (created by imgmirc
setup) responsible to use randomly chosen from that file message as your
"quit reason" message.
All these things are good, but so far there is nothing to do with
imgmirc.dll itself. imgmirc comes into play then you press
'alt+f4' in mIRC, or kill the mirc by pressing upper-right
close button. In that case, alias 'im_allquit' is executed
by imgmirc.dll, causing a send of quit message (causing call of the
'im_quit' alias, to be accurate) for every server you
connected to, and after this, closing the mIRC.
If you want to perform such a substitution even when you quit by
typing '/quit' in the edit box, you have to add another
mIRC alias by hand (you can probably add aliases into mIRC by pressing
'alt-r', and going to 'aliases' tab):
quit im_quit $1-
Note that 'im_quit' alias is smart, i.e. then (if
alias above is created) you type:
/quit behold my glory!
result will be quitting from current server:
* slartibartfast (~zvold@zvold.aero) Quit (Quit: behold my
glory!)
But if you type:
/quit
result will be also quitting from currently active server only,
but the quit message will be taken from your custom quit messages list
(imgmirc/quit_msgs.txt).
imgmirc variables section was refashioned in v0.25 due to
introducing of the graphical
configurator UI, through which all former variables should be
changed now. All '%imgmirc_*' variables (except for
%imgmirc_ver, see below) have been combined into the single
variable %imgmirc_config, which you shouldn't edit
manually.
There are two other variables besides
%imgmirc_config:
%hl_mainstr - string variable containing special
line generated every time imgmirc.dll loads and used for regexp
highilghting.
NOTE: you must add mIRC highlight on
%hl_mainstr manually in order to make PCRE highlighting
work.
%imgmirc_ver - contains current imgmirc version,
also being refreshed with every imgmirc.dll loading.
NOTE: It's better not to change these variables by hand, they are internal imgmirc variables.
Kill all mirc applications, if running any.
Unzip the following files from imgmirc.zip into your mirc directory, OR, if you're running mirc with option -r, into your custom directory:
If you have already installed previous version of imgmirc, extract all files except subdirectories 'imgmirc\' and 'src\' from this package in order to preserve your old settings, such as highlights, quit messages, and perhaps customized smileys images.
If it's a first time you're setting up imgmirc.dll, just extract everything from the archive except 'src\' directory.
Run mirc.exe.
If it's a first-time installation:
Type '/load -rs imgmirc.mrc'. Answer 'Yes'
in following menu.
Customize options, checking check boxes ;)
If you've enabled custom quit messages, edit
'imgmirc/quit_msgs.txt' file. Read this section of the manual,
then add mirc alias 'quit im_quit $1-' if you
want to).
If you've enabled regexp highlighting, read this section of the manual, then
edit 'imgmirc/highlights.txt' file. Also edit highlighting options
for %hl_mainstr to that you're used to.
imgmirc configurator dialog is started by an alias command:
/im_config
, or through mIRC menu:
Commands->imgmirc config
When imgmirc.dll is installed for the first time, the configurator GUI invoked automatically.
You can customize following options:
Enable smileys replacement (was %imgmirc_smiles
variable in v0.21), see graphical
smileys over text section.
Transparent smileys - pretty much self-explanatory. If not, read graphical smileys over text section.
Enable PCRE highlighting support (was
%imgmirc_pcrehl in v0.21), see regexp-powered highlighting
section.
Perform /im_allquit... (was %imgmirc_quithook in
v0.21), see custom quit
messages section.
Alt-x minimizes mIRC (was %imgmirc_kbdhook in
v0.21) - if not set, pressing 'alt-x' won't minimize
mIRC.
Automatically load with mIRC (was %imgmirc_load
in v0.21) - if this option is set, imgmirc.dll is loaded
automatically when mIRC starts (better leave this option enabled,
but just in case, you can always load imgmirc.dll manually by using
'/im_preload' alias).
Enable verbose mode (was %imgmirc_verbose in
v0.21) - toggle verbose behaviour of imgmirc off/on (useful for
debugging).
Protect from unloading by mIRC (was
%imgmirc_keepalive in v0.21) - if not set, mIRC will
automatically unload imgmirc.dll if it's not used for ten minutes
(term 'not used' means no dll functions are called. Drawing of a
smiley for example, is not a imgmirc.dll function call. So, better
leave this check box set).
NOTE: Due to desired non-modality of configurator dialog, it's implementation appeared to be not very simple and uses a bunch of mIRC timers for synchronization. Shortly speaking, the probability of a bug in the configurator code is high, so any information on bugs found is much appreciated (for example, strange changes in check boxes status, or a failure to start the configurator dialog). Also, please read the known issues section.
imgmirc sources are located in the directory 'src' in
this distributive. imgmirc uses PCRE library, so the following files are
needed to build the dll: pcre.lib (or pcred.lib
for debug build) and pcre.h. I've included them in the
distributive along with PCRE library license file
'license_pcre.txt'. Starting from v0.27s, I build imgmirc.dll
with MS Visual C++ 2005 compiler, project file
imgmirc.vcproj. The process of building imgmirc.dll is
hopefully like following: open imgmirc.vcproj file, and do
'rebuild all' command for a "Release" configuration. You can
also try to build using older imgmirc.dsp project.
Please NOTE that source code of imgmirc.dll is NOT in the public
domain. This library is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. For
more information, please read lesser.txt file provided within
this package.
imgmirc doesn't work under Windows 95.
And this will never be fixed probably. Techniques used in the imgmirc simply are not possible under Windows 95...
imgmirc doesn't work in multiple instances of mIRC.
imgmirc uses DDE for communicating with mIRC. When a second instance of mIRC is being started, it overrides previously created DDE server. There is always the single DDE server for all mIRC instances. That's why there is always only one imgmirc instance. Btw, mIRC supports multi-irc-server since version about 6.01, so I personally don't see any reason for multiple mIRC instances usage. If you use another mIRC instance for some kind of a bot, it's possible just to disable imgmirc in that instance, and enable it in your 'working' instance of mIRC.
If one tries to run imgmirc on multiple instances of mIRC, results are kind of unpredictable.
Smileys images can't be larger than 'enclosing' text.
Several people asked how to make images larger while preserving remaining text in the original size. The answer is 'it's not possible'. imgmirc 'overrides' API function for text drawing, and draws images instead of letters. If images are larger than 'enclosing' letters, they either will overlap with other text, or become overlapped by it. It is impossible to 'slide apart' original text in order to fit large image between letters or lines. Hovewer, it would be easy to implement if mIRC starts using RichEdit as a base class for "chat" windows at some point in time.
Actually, an issue with animated gif images goes to this section too. Because of images drawing system of imgmirc described above, it's not very easy (but it's possible) to track coordinates of images drawn in mIRC windows in order to update them at appropriate moments of time (e.g. animate).
Transparent smileys sometimes overlap each other.
This can be fixed and is in the TODO list.
imgmirc.dll written by Ivan Zvolsky aka zvold (i.zvolsky@gmail.com). For licensing details, please refer to the 'Building from sources' section of this manual.
Regular expression support is provided by the PCRE library package, which is open source software, written by Philip Hazel, and copyright by the University of Cambridge, England. ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/ See also http://pcre.org/
Thanks for reading, and sorry for spelling and grammar errors.