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Microsoft Chat 2.5 beta-1 — Modern build (v2.5-beta-1-modern)

This folder is a modernized port of Microsoft Chat 2.5 beta-1 (the June 1998 "Microsoft Chat" client — the most advanced single-client version in this repository). The goal of this folder is to be easy to build and run on a current Windows + Visual Studio machine, while leaving the original v2.5-beta-1/ tree untouched as the historical reference.

The original 2.5 source built with the Windows NT DDK BUILD.EXE system (sources / dirs / makefile.def). This folder replaces that with a clean, self-contained nmake makefile (chat.mak) that uses a modern Visual Studio C++/MFC toolchain.

Building

From a 32-bit Visual Studio developer prompt (or by calling vcvars32.bat):

call "<VisualStudio>\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars32.bat"
cd v2.5-beta-1-modern
nmake /f chat.mak CFG="chat - Win32 Release"    REM optimized, for everyday use
nmake /f chat.mak CFG="chat - Win32 Debug"      REM asserts + TRACE for DebugView

Two configurations are provided:

  • Release -> Release\CChat.exe (optimized /MT//O2, NDEBUG). Use this for normal use. It behaves like the original shipped product.
  • Debug -> Debug\CChat.exe (/MTd//Od, _DEBUG). Use this for development: it emits TRACE output (viewable in Sysinternals DebugView) and keeps assertions, which is handy when investigating behavior.

Both link MFC statically. Character/backdrop art lives next to the source in comicart\ as .avb / .bgb files.

Why two configs? This is a 1996-1998 MFC app. A modern debug build injects assertions (debug-heap validation, MFC teardown-order and CRT range checks) that did not exist in its original MFC 4.0 / old-CRT toolchain. Several of them fire harmlessly during normal use and shutdown; left as modal dialogs they can block CWinApp::ExitInstance (where settings are saved), which can make settings appear not to persist. The Release build has none of these and runs/saves exactly like the original. The Debug build additionally installs a CRT report hook to suppress those assertion dialogs and saves settings at frame close, so it stays usable too.

The makefile does not track header dependencies. After editing any .h, delete the matching Debug\*.obj / Release\*.obj and rebuild so the change propagates everywhere.

What changed to build under a modern compiler

Build system

  • New chat.mak (replaces the NT DDK sources/dirs build). Precompiled headers are intentionally disabled for robustness.
  • Compiler switches that restore legacy behaviour: /Zc:forScope- (old for-loop scoping), /Zc:strictStrings- (string-literal → char*), plus /FORCE:MULTIPLE /nodefaultlib:"libc" and the spectre-mitigated ATLMFC lib path.
  • MIDL generates icchat.h / icchat_i.c from base\icchat.idl.
  • The delay-load DLL wrappers (dlylddll.c → ..\core\dlylddll.c) are compiled in; they provide the msrating / msconf / wininet thunks. wininet.lib is linked. NetMeeting (nmproto) stays excluded (off by default).

Legacy C++ fixes

  • Removed trailing inline on declarations/definitions (f() inline;/{).
  • Added missing return types (e.g. several splinutl functions, SortFunc, GetIndex).
  • Renamed DECLARE_OLECMD_MAP / GetCommandMap → MY_* / MyGetCommandMap to avoid a covariant-return clash with modern CCmdTarget::GetCommandMap.
  • Cast const-qualified strchr/strstr results back to char*.
  • Renamed avbfile / avatar INT8/INT16/INT32 → AVBINT8/16/32 (they collided with the SDK's signed INT8/16/32).
  • mcithrd: local MSG for the thread pump, 3-arg PostThreadMessage.
  • chatsrv::ReattachTo now uses CAsyncSocket::Detach/AttachHandle (the modern MFC socket handle map is internal).
  • Misc: CWnd::CreateEx qualification, abs → labs((long)), const ints in ColorDlg.h.

Two fixes that were the real blockers

  • stdafx.h: removed the 1998 #define tagLVITEMA _LV_ITEMA (and LVFINDINFO/TCITEM) remap. It was added to match MFC 4.0's old common-control struct tags; modern MFC and the SDK both use the new tags, so the remap instead broke linking against CListCtrl/CTabCtrl.
  • stdafx.cpp: added a Common Controls v6 manifest dependency. The 2.5 toolbar is a rebar (CCoolBar), and RB_INSERTBAND fails unless the loaded comctl32 matches the modern REBARBANDINFO size. Without this the toolbar fails to create → the main frame fails → a debug-heap assertion on cleanup. This is the manifest that makes the app actually start.

Other build-enabling changes

  • resource.h: shifted the 9 ID_EM_* emotion IDs out of MFC's reserved 0xF006 string-table range (they collided with afxres.rc).
  • Added chatver.h and chatver.rc (the version stamp; these were generated by the original DDK build and were missing from the source drop).
  • Shared fix in ../artifacts/core/urlutil.cpp (const int + (LPTSTR) casts).

Display scaling

The app runs DPI-unaware: it deliberately does not call SetProcessDPIAware(), so on a high-DPI display Windows bitmap-scales the whole window uniformly (toolbar, status bar, menus, every font, and the comic view all scale together). This avoids the "some surfaces scale, others stay tiny" mess that results from per-surface scaling in a TWIP + pixel hybrid UI like this one.

A DpiScale() helper (dpiscale.h) and the per-surface scaling ported from v1.0-pre-modern are still present but become no-ops while DPI- unaware (the display DPI reads as 96). If you'd rather make the app DPI-aware and scale every surface yourself, that infrastructure is the starting point — left as an exercise for the reader.

Other modernization fixes

  • Mouse-wheel scrolling in the comic view (CPageView::OnMouseWheel).
  • Panels-per-row auto-fit on resize — CPageView chooses the largest comfortable column count for the current width, deferred via a posted WM_AUTOFITPANELS message to avoid WM_SIZE re-entrancy.
  • IRC JOIN parsing — modern servers (e.g. Libera) send JOIN #channel with the channel as a normal argument rather than a :-trailing parameter; the JOIN handler now recovers the channel from args[1] so rooms register correctly.
  • Text view buffer tracking — modern RichEdit stores a line break as a single \r, so the old m_dwBuffSize accounting (which counted \r\n as two) drifted and tripped debug assertions; it now resyncs to the control's actual length.
  • No dead-server downloads — Comic Chat used to fetch custom characters and backdrops from Microsoft's (now-gone) art servers. Both download paths are disabled in favor of the bundled art, with a one-time heads-up dialog.
  • Bundled-art lookup — the art is found whether it sits next to the exe (distribution) or one directory up (the dev Debug\ layout).
  • On-screen startup window — a stale/oversized saved placement is shrunk to the work area and clamped fully on-screen.
  • Safe is* functions (safectype.h) — isspace/isdigit/ etc. are wrapped to pass unsigned char, so high-byte characters no longer trip the modern debug CRT.
  • Default comic balloon font bumped from 9pt to 12pt for readability on large high-DPI panels (IDS_DFLT_COMICSPNTSIZE).

Known differences / not yet ported

  • Native TLS transport is not included. 2.5's ircsock.cpp already uses SSPI, but for IRC authentication (server auth packages), not SChannel transport encryption. Adding TLS would mean porting the CTlsClient SChannel client from v1.0-pre-modern/tlssock.cpp and wiring a "Use SSL" / port 6697 option into the connect dialog. See ../docs/tls.md.
  • Balloon word-wrap is intentionally left as-is: 2.5 already has a more advanced international, word-boundary-aware wrapper (FindSubStringForINTLThatFits), so the simpler v1.0-pre-modern fix is not needed here.