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So, i have an iPhone IRC client code that connects with IRC servers perfectly. I can join rooms, and i can chat in room with other users and i can do private chat as well.

I can send my chat message in Arabic, no problem. But there is a requirement that NickName is only accepted in English.

If i enter my NickName in Arabic it does not log me in. Its really important that i should be able to use Arabic NickName.

And emoticons in NickName is not supported as well.

I have also tried to connect with IRC servers using MIRC desktop application, but with arabic NickName it give an error of "erronous NickName"

I might be in wrong direction here, but this is what i am facing now.

Any help, info, may be pointing me to the right direction will be highly appreciated.

thanks.

M.Yessir
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1 Answers1

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IRC is an old protocol (think 25 years), and is from a time that internationalisation, and universal character sets did not exist. From the latest RFC on the protocol, RFC2812, a nickname has to be of the format:

nickname   =  ( letter / special ) *8( letter / digit / special / "-" )
  • A "special" is one of the following characters: []`_^{|}
  • A letter is a character from the latin alphabet, thus A-Z or a-z
  • A digit is one of the numerals 0-9

You cannot reasonably expect a server to support other characters or nicknames which fall outside these limitations. If your requirement is to be able to use nicknames outside these limitations, use a different (more modern) chat protocol.

stwalkerster
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  • Even now, with much more focus on internationalization, servers stick to the ASCII character set for nicknames, because many functions of IRC require that you be able to quickly and accurately input the nickname of another user. As IRC is still fundamentally a text-based medium, and many clients are terminal-based, that means being able to type the nickname. ASCII remains as a least common denominator - regardless of someone's language or keyboard, they have the ability to input ASCII characters. – Stephanie Jul 24 '16 at 08:06