mIRCs color coding system

Revision as of 09:08, 6 September 2008

The color codes in mIRC are inserted by hitting the ctrl-K key
combination. The actual control character inserted in the text 
is a ctrl-C seen as ^C or inverse C on most UNIX clients.

Besides mIRC lots of other IRC clients support the ^C color 
attribute. Only if all clients accept the same syntax it will be 
simple and usefull for non-color IRC users to strip away the color 
codes. (See aditional info at end of file)

The syntax of the color attribute in text has the format ^CN[,M] 

N and M can be any number out of a range {0,1,..,15} thus pointing 
to a range of sixteen colors. N will be the text (foreground) color, 
M a background color. A background color (M) is not always included.
If no background color is set the recieving client uses his default 
background color (white). Additionally you can use color 99 to 
indicate a transparent color.

A plain ^C can be used to close the effect, much like the normal 
Bold/Inverse/Underline attributes. Typing a ^O will make sure all 
color coding get switched off, just as with the bold, underline etc. (!)

! Technically mIRC accepts the full number range 0,1,2,... 99 (and
  even 00,01,02,03,...99) as valid color numbers. Thus N and M can 
  maximally be two digits long. Color 16 is the same as color 0,
  color 17 is the same as color 1, etc. etc. 

You can expect to see combinations like:
 blabla ^C5,12to be colored text and background^C blabla
 blabla ^C5to be colored text^C blabla
 blabla ^C3to be colored text ^C5,2other colored text and also background^C blabla
 blabla ^C3,5to be colored text and background ^C8other colored text but SAME background^C blabla
 blabla ^C3,5to be colored text and background ^C8,7other colored text and other background^C blabla

As you see the background color keeps valid till it is changed or till 
the entire color is switched off with a ^C. Of course lines can start 
with colored text from the beginning and a closing ^C is not always given.
To specify a background color ALSO a foreground color has to be given.
(So a ^C,8 attribute is NOT valid and thus ignored)

! Note that if you want to give color to NUMBERS this syntax could mess up
  if used improperly :-)  Still this syntax is chosen for the sake of 
  symplicity. If you use color numbers 01,02,03,...09 instead of 1,2,3,...9 
  all possible problems with giving color to numbers are prevented! This 
  just takes a little dicipline from the users. Thus use ^C0,01123^C to 
  display the text 123 in white on a black background and not ^C0,1123^C 
  which would result in the text 23 in white on lightcyan.
  In all your text handling aliases/scripts the use of double digit color 
  codes is suggested!

Color code list
 0 white
 1 black
 2 blue     (navy)
 3 green
 4 red
 5 brown    (maroon)
 6 purple
 7 orange   (olive)
 8 yellow
 9 lt.green (lime)
 10 teal    (a kinda green/blue cyan)
 11 lt.cyan (cyan ?) (aqua)
 12 lt.blue (royal)
 13 pink    (light purple) (fuchsia)
 14 grey
 15 lt.grey (silver)

This list matches best to already existing 'standards' on Mac and 
other Windows' clients. 

Unix IRCii users might want to have some filter script to get rid of 
all color coding. Look here for some examples:
	http://www.mirc.co.uk/cstrip.irc
	http://www.best.com/~linux/ircII/nocolor?n

I hope this information is of use to you?  If you need any more 
info, please ask me? :-))  I'm always willing to dig up more info 
for you :-) 

Tjerk Vonck. 

tjerk@mirc.com
January, 1998 - slightly updated october 2001.