The Bat! program folder has a folder of emoticons (smilies) and in messages from others displays smilies as graphic images. But I can't find anything in the Help file or here on how to insert smilies into new messages.
In the images directory you find a default.msl and that shows the symbols that translate to certain smileys. However, only recipients with TB will see the graphics, others will see the text.
__________________________________ I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
Thanks for the reply. It is a bit cryptic. I could find nothing on this in the Help file.
.msl is a scripting language file. Why a scripting language file?
> symbols that translate to certain smileys
"Translate" how? Do you put the symbol in the message and an interpreter translates it on the fly when the message is sent? Is it not possible to see the gif before the message is sent?
Someone sent me a message with a .gif smilie embedded in it. The gif displayed normally. I don't know what client the person used -- there was no X-Mailer header, but I think it came from the CommuniGate Pro LIST 4.1.8 listerv software.
Using a script interpreter to insert a gif emoticon is a conceptual oxymoron IMHO. Emoticons aren't really for hackers. And users who aren't interested in "secret handshakes" shouldn't have to bother with them. Providing a menu choice or a simple graphic toolbar selector and a display of the gif during composition would just plain be better interface design.
If the design team needs an example, they might check out some of the current Forum software, on say, a web site like www.ritlabs.com.
(OK, so this software doesn't display the gif during composition. But I can provide examples of software that does. Even the implementation here is more straightforward than in The Bat!.)
"Translate" how? Do you put the symbol in the message and an interpreter translates it on the fly when the message is sent? Is it not possible to see the gif before the message is sent?
When you're using smileys with TB, you're sending text tags like ; - ) (without the spaces) and when your addressee is using TB that tag is translated into by TB's Rich Text Viewer. However, when the addressee doesn't use TB, it just shows as a text tag. The smileys are just the smileys evberybody was using before the IM software started to mess around with graphic smileys.
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Using a script interpreter to insert a gif emoticon is a conceptual oxymoron IMHO. Emoticons aren't really for hackers. And users who aren't interested in "secret handshakes" shouldn't have to bother with them. Providing a menu choice or a simple graphic toolbar selector and a display of the gif during composition would just plain be better interface design.
As I see it, you're more interested in sending pictures along with your messages. That way everybody sees them in the same way. In order to do that, you need to use the HTML editor and insert the smileys (pictures) from disk. This is not the way TB inserts smileys, since it has serious drawbacks like needed bandwidth. I just checked a message with a real graphic smiley and it was an attachment of more than 8kB, whereas TB's smileys take 3B, when you take into account that mime attachments are half bigger than their file size (due to the necessary encoding) TB's smileys are 4000 times smaller than pictures.
Believe me, when you're on a bad connection or you've got a limited size mailbox, you're not happy with people sending pictures of silly faces, just to show they were kidding.
__________________________________ I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
Believe me, when you're on a bad connection or you've got a limited size mailbox, you're not happy with people sending pictures of silly faces, just to show they were kidding.