1.8 Display name vice username option

[billthefish]

We strongly encourage the use of real names on my current forum and I'd like to see an option to allow the use of a "display name" everywhere a username is displayed barring, of course, the actual login page. I'm currently using a patch of the core files to accomplish this (mostly) and the only plugin I could find is not 1.8 compatible. At the very least I'd like to see a hook inserted every time a username is retrieve for display so that I could more easily provide this functionality via a plugin instead of a hack of the core

[dragonexpert]

In 2.0 I could see this feature, but it'd be very difficult to modify the 1.8 series at this point.

[billthefish]

Sadly, if what I read about threading being removed from 2.0 is true then I probably won't be upgrading to 2.0. A quick poll of our user base revealed that threading is well liked by most core forum participants and the lack there of would be a detriment to their user experience on the forum.