Re: WinGaim on ICQ

Kevin M Stange spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Evan Schoenberg wrote:
> >On Dec 11, 2004, at 4:17 PM, Kevin M Stange wrote:
> >
> >>More accurately, our ICQ protocol plugin supports no formatting.  An 
> >>RTF implementation would be required to support formatting.
> >
> >Hm, so there's a protocol specification for formatting which the 
> >official clients wouldn't balk at receiving?
>
> All I can really tell you is that I know that ICQ uses RTF.  RTF is a 
> published specification, but I am sure ICQ doesn't support the entire 
> thing.  I would guess playing with official clients to observe behavior 
> would be the most effective way to determine how they prepare RTF 
> formatting.

ICQ might support a disturbingly large subset of RTF ... I have a suspi-
cion that the ICQ developers simply used the standard Windows  RTF  text
widget  (I  forget  what widget that is, but I recall its existence) and
sent whatever it produced.  The RTF understood by an  unmodified  widget
is  no  doubt a lesser set than produced by, say, Word's RTF output fil-
ter, but it is probably distressingly complex in the context of Gaim  --
especially given that nobody cares that much.

Ethan

-- 
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                -- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764

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