Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source

Post by Athas » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 10:47 AM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #116

Athas wrote: post #19

Comic Chat is a piece of Internet history, but I remember that it was somewhat reviled when I first started being active on IRC. This was around 2002, so it was probably due to some cultural memory rather than anyone having actually used it in years. The issue, as I remember it, is that Comic Chat extended the IRC protocol with support for explicitly indicating the appearance and emoting of your comic character, rath…

Comic Chat inspired me to make multiplayer games with IRC as the lobby server. But I specifically did not do what Microsoft did and send the metadata through the public channel, because I too had gone through the public ridicule of using Comic Chat. Instead, I used DMs between users to perform the signaling (which would then open a socket to create a direct TCP connection between the players). It was pretty easy to d…

Post by DonHopkins » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 11:38 AM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #171

DonHopkins wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Comic Sans, asshole! https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole >Listen up. I know the shit you’ve been saying behind my back. You think I’m stupid. You think I’m immature. You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg. One other place: We shipped The Sims 1 u…

> I'm Comic Sans, asshole! https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole That text would have sounded a whole lot more convincing if it had actually used Comic Sans... EDIT: turns out it actually does, or it tries to. The paragraphs have "font-family:'Comic Sans', 'Comic Sans MS', 'Marker Felt';". But, as a Comic Sans hating Linux user, I of course don't have the first two installed, and no idea what this…

  (set-face-attribute 'default nil
                      :family "Comic Sans MS"
                      :height 420)

Post by barrystaes » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 12:02 PM UTC

Post by runlaszlorun » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 12:43 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #166

lysace wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open sourcing code is always welcome. However it's kind of weird that you choose this very explicit 1996 Embrace, extend, and extinguish piece of software to showcase. In this case it was IRC. In other cases it was Java, the web, etc.

Yeah, that's right, it was all Microsoft's evil plan to extinguish proper serious legitimate grown-up fonts by rolling out Comic Sans. JFC dude, the US Government is being taken over by narcissistic fascists, currenty embracing, extending, and extinguishing Democracy itself, and you chose this hill to die on. It doesn’t even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I’m famous. I am on every major operating…

Post by PunchyHamster » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

Athas wrote: post #19

Comic Chat is a piece of Internet history, but I remember that it was somewhat reviled when I first started being active on IRC. This was around 2002, so it was probably due to some cultural memory rather than anyone having actually used it in years. The issue, as I remember it, is that Comic Chat extended the IRC protocol with support for explicitly indicating the appearance and emoting of your comic character, rath…