Chat

Chat strings are subject to myriad limitations imposed by defects in the Notchian server and client, and also have special meanings for certain characters.

Character Set

The following list of characters are known to be supported by the Notchian server:

" !\"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\\]^_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~⌂ÇüéâäàåçêëèïîìÄÅÉæÆôöòûùÿÖÜø£Ø׃áíóúñѪº¿®¬½¼¡«»"

Characters not in this list will cause Notchian servers to kick clients, and Notchian clients to choke and die horribly.

Colors

The Notchian client has support for colorized text. To select a color, a color escape code, similar to an ANSI color escape code, is inserted to change the color of the following characters.

Hex digit to color mapping

Sample	Code	Common Name	Foreground Color			Background Color			Hexadecimal
			R	G	B	R	G	B
	0	Black	0	0	0	0	0	0	#000000
	1	Dark blue	0	0	170	0	0	42	#0000aa
	2	Dark green	0	170	0	0	42	0	#00aa00
	3	Dark cyan	0	170	170	0	42	42	#00aaaa
	4	Dark red	170	0	0	42	0	0	#aa0000
	5	Purple	170	0	170	42	0	42	#aa00aa
	6	Gold	255	170	0	42	42	0	#ffaa00
	7	Gray	170	170	170	42	42	42	#aaaaaa
	8	Dark gray	85	85	85	21	21	21	#555555
	9	Blue	85	85	255	21	21	63	#5555ff
	a	Bright green	85	255	85	21	63	21	#55ff55
	b	Cyan	85	255	255	21	63	63	#55ffff
	c	Red	255	85	85	63	21	21	#ff5555
	d	Pink	255	85	255	63	21	63	#ff55ff
	e	Yellow	255	255	85	63	63	21	#ffff55
	f	White	255	255	255	63	63	63	#ffffff

These correspond very roughly to the colors available in ANSI terminals.

A color escape code is created by combining the control character § (U+00A7) for Minecraft, or & for Minecraft Classic, with the character specifying the color; thus, "§4" in Minecraft selects dark red as the color for the following text, and "&4" does the same for classic.

Styles

Minecraft 1.2.4 added several new font style escape codes. Like the color codes above, style escape codes are created by combining § (U+00A7) with one of the following characters. Style codes can be combined (except for "r") to enable multiple effects at once. Using any color codes will reset the current style back to plain (unknown if this is a bug or intended behavior). The "r" plain style code will also reset the current chat color back to white (may also be a bug). The "k" random style code already existed before 1.2.4, and it is used for the "§kFUNKY LOL" message in /title/splashes.txt inside minecraft.jar.

Sample	Code	Style
	k	Random
	l	Bold
	m	Strikethrough
	n	Underlined
	o	Italic
	r	Plain White

Bugs

The Notchian client expects that a color escape code in a chat message will be followed by at least one character, and will otherwise crash with a StringIndexOutOfBoundsException. The workaround for servers is to never end a message with a color control character.