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Feature #2634
openCTCP Avatars
Start date:
04/17/2016
Due date:
% Done:
0%
Estimated time:
Operative System:
All
Description
The ability to get and show CTCP avatars in the nicklist would be a great feature.
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Added by Gareth Williams about 8 years ago. Updated over 5 years ago.
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Description
The ability to get and show CTCP avatars in the nicklist would be a great feature.
Thanks for your suggestion, I thought about it, but it's not a widely supported protocol and there is to many technical difficulties.
I might add support for the CTCP feature itself though.
That's actually a shame to hear. Up until I recently got AdiIRC running smoothly in WINE (Codeweavers Crossover, to be precise), I had taken to using KVIrc when using Kubuntu (more and more as Windows 10 has become more and more bloated and unpleasant to use) and while it was a poor substitute the one feature I thought was impressive was the implementation of the AVATAR spec though of course it's sparsely seen in the wild since they're the only ones advancing it. I kinda hoped that more clients would adopt it since adoption is always driven by availability. IRC has a hard time with user retention precisely because the feature set has evolved so slowly in comparison to all of the IM competition and one thing they all have that IRC still lacks is an avatar system. I respect your judgment and don't mean to question it, just wanted to offer another perspective on the matter.
Thanks again for all the hard work on AdiIRC. In my opinion it's one of the best software projects out there and an epitaph level accomplishment.
Thanks for the kind words.
I think the way the AVATAR protocol it implemented is not a very good solution, having to CTCP users and then transfer images through DCC which can be very painful because of problems with firewalls/routers/NAT/closed ports and so on.
There is a script which could maybe be modified to save the image, then use /setoption to associate the image with a nick.
But to get a broader support for such things as avatars, I think the proposed ircv3 METADATA specification will have a much bigger chance. it also uses a image URL so it will be much easier to retrieve in the clients.
When the spec is finalized, AdiIRC will implement it as it does with every ircv3 spec, we'll have to wait and see how it works out.
Would like to mention another problem with both implementations. Since there are no central authority to pre-screen/ban users avatars, it will be used for trolling with gore/porn and other offensive and possibly illegal images.
Users would have to manually remove these avatars/images.