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MODERNIZATION.md

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Modernizing Microsoft Comic Chat (2026)

This document is the landing page for the work done to get the 1996 Microsoft Comic Chat MFC client to build, run, and look right on a modern high-DPI Windows machine — and to optionally talk TLS to today's IRC networks. It links to the detailed write-ups and summarizes every change in one place.

Area Detail doc
High-DPI rendering + UI scaling + UX polish dpi-awareness.md
Native TLS over IRC (SChannel) tls.md (on the tls-schannel branch / PR)
Modern build of the 2.5 beta-1 client ../v2.5-beta-1-modern/README.md

1. Building with the modern VC++ / MFC toolchain

The project still uses its original nmake makefile (src/chat.mak), but it now compiles and links with a current Visual Studio C++/MFC toolchain:

call "<VS>\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars32.bat"
cd src
nmake /f chat.mak CFG="chat - Win32 Debug"

What had to change to build under a modern compiler:

  • Legacy C++ that no longer compiles
    • For-loop variable scoping: for (i = 0; ...) reusing an out-of-scope i → for (int i = 0; ...).
    • Trailing inline placement (void f() inline { } → inline void f() { }).
    • Const-correctness on strchr/strrchr results assigned to char*.
    • A missing type on extern bCXKeepServer → extern BOOL bCXKeepServer.
    • A richedit ENLINK / CFE_LINK redefinition guarded with #ifndef.
    • An ID_EM_* string-id collision with modern afxres.h.
  • MFC/OLE binder macro clashes (DECLARE_OLECMD_MAP / BEGIN_OLECMD_MAP) renamed to project-local macros.
  • Linker: link uuid.lib (the makefile referenced a long-gone uuid3.lib) plus the spectre-mitigated ATLMFC libs; stub the missing Lernout & Hauspie TTS wrapper (lhwrap.dll's initproc / ttsproc / exitproc) that the original chat.exe imported for text-to-speech.

Behavioral note: a couple of /FORCE-style and nodefaultlib quirks of the original makefile are preserved; see chat.mak.

2. High-DPI: making it render correctly

Comic Chat draws the comic page in device-independent TWIPs, but the rest of the UI (member-list icons, the bodycam emotion wheel, the Say box and toolbar) uses hardcoded 96-DPI pixels. Full story in dpi-awareness.md; in brief:

  • Declare DPI awareness (SetProcessDPIAware) so the app renders at native resolution instead of being bitmap-stretched.
  • Comic panels: size the off-screen panel bitmap from the DC's real LPtoDP extent (not GetDeviceCaps), rebuild it when that extent changes, and blit with StretchBlt as a guard. Fixes panels clipped on the right/bottom.
  • Pixel-based surfaces: a single DpiScale(n) helper (seeded once from the screen DPI) scales the member-list face icons, the bodycam emotion wheel and its face icons, the Say-box font, the four action-balloon toolbar buttons, and the Say pane's minimum height. DpiScale(n) == n at 96 DPI, so standard-DPI users are unaffected.
  • Rejected uniform OS scaling (DPI virtualization / GDI Scaling): the latter opened the window gigantic because Comic Chat persists window geometry in raw pixels.

3. UX polish

  • Mouse-wheel scrolling in the comic area (CPageView::OnMouseWheel).
  • Panels-per-row auto-fit: the column count now fits the window width (FitPanelsWide) instead of a fixed/persisted 2; the reflow is deferred via a posted message to avoid a SetPanelsWide → WM_SIZE re-entrancy crash.
  • Balloon word-wrap: a single word is no longer split mid-character to fit a narrow estimate (so "Test" no longer renders as "Tes" / "t"); the balloon grows to keep the word whole.

4. Native TLS over IRC (separate branch)

Comic Chat (1996) predates TLS and speaks only plaintext IRC, so it can't reach TLS-only ports such as irc.libera.chat:6697. The tls-schannel branch adds native TLS via the built-in Windows SChannel/SSPI provider — no external tunnel (stunnel/ZNC), no third-party crypto library. A "Use SSL (TLS)" checkbox in the Connect dialog turns it on (and defaults the port to 6697). Full design, the client-certificate gotcha, and the permissive-validation caveat are in tls.md.

5. Verification

All of the above was verified end-to-end on a 144-DPI (150%) display: build, launch, connect to Libera, comic view with an uncut title, correctly-scaled member faces / avatar preview / emotion wheel, legible Say box, mouse-wheel scroll, 3+ panels per row, and clean balloon word-wrap. Standard-DPI behavior is unchanged.

6. The 2.5 beta-1 client (v2.5-beta-1-modern/)

Everything above targets the v1.0-pre-modern/ tree (the v1.0-pre client). The repository also contains the more advanced Microsoft Chat 2.5 beta-1 (June 1998) source, which originally built with the Windows NT DDK BUILD.EXE system rather than nmake.

v2.5-beta-1-modern/ is a copy of that tree brought up on the modern toolchain with its own clean nmake makefile, so it builds and runs today:

call "<VS>\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars32.bat"
cd v2.5-beta-1-modern
nmake /f chat.mak CFG="chat - Win32 Debug"

Highlights of the bring-up (full list in the folder's README.md):

  • A new chat.mak replacing the DDK sources/dirs build; MIDL for the COM proxy; the delay-load DLL thunks compiled in; wininet.lib linked.
  • The same class of legacy-C++ cleanups as v1.0-pre-modern, plus 2.5-specific ones (INT8/16/32 SDK collision, MyGetCommandMap, socket-handle reattach, …).
  • Two real blockers: removing the MFC-4.0 tagLVITEMA → _LV_ITEMA remap from stdafx.h (it broke linking against modern MFC common controls), and adding a Common Controls v6 manifest so the rebar toolbar's RB_INSERTBAND succeeds (that failure was the startup crash).
  • Re-created the missing chatver.h / chatver.rc version stamp.
  • The DPI, mouse-wheel and panels-per-row work above, ported across.

Not ported: native TLS transport (2.5's SSPI is for IRC authentication, not SChannel) and main-toolbar glyph scaling. 2.5's balloon wrapper is already international/word-aware, so the src word-wrap fix is unnecessary there.