New and improved

The following table lists all of the things that are new and improved with Scott Pakin's Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator.

When? What's new? What's improved?
9 November 2023 Version 7.4 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The program's vocabulary now contains 18,000 words and phrases.
6 August 2021 Version 7.3 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The program's vocabulary now contains 17,000 words and phrases.
15 May 2021 Version 7.2 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released A new grammatical category was added, enabling more sentence variety.
2 February 2021 Version 7.1 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released Fixed a number of serious bugs that occasionally corrupted the output text.
14 September 2020 Version 7.0 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released Complete rewrite (and concomitant port from C to Haskell) greatly increases the program's flexibility and maintainability and breathes new life into a piece of code that's over 30 years old.
13 August 2020 Version 6.4 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The program's vocabulary now contains 16,000 words and phrases.
17 September 2019 For version 6.3, removed all PHP code from the automatic complaint-letter (and Web server) More secure and robust software
4 January 2019 Version 6.2, supporting a bit more control over phrase composition More convincing sentence construction is possible in some cases.
29 December 2018 Version 6.1, including a new grammatical category: infinitive phrases that end a sentence The text should flow a little smoother than before.
22 August 2017 Always use secure HTTPS communication with the server It's now safe to generate complaints about your credit-card number (not that you'd necessary want to, of course).
11 June 2017 Version 6.0 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The program's vocabulary has reached another major milestone: 15,000 words and phrases!
14 December 2014 Version 5.9 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released Three new grammatical categories were added, which slightly increases sentence variety.
10 October 2014 Version 5.8 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The program's vocabulary now contains 14,000 words and phrases.
19 January 2013 Server upgrade The Web site should be faster and more responsive.
20 August 2012 Version 5.7 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The input form now includes a mobile-optimized version.
28 July 2012 Version 5.6 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The program's vocabulary now contains 13,000 words and phrases.
2 February 2012 Generated complaints begin with an explanation and legal disclaimer Humorless grouches will be less shocked when they discover that my program wrote some nonflattering text about them.
3 April 2011 Web pages now in UTF-8 encoding Accented characters should finally appear correctly. So if you've been waiting all these years to complain about Björn Þórðarson, now you can.
1 October 2010 The automatic complaint-letter generator is now available as a (free!) iPhone app, iComplain. The app provides an iPhone-optimized interface, including importing names and saving, emailing, and speech-synthesizing complaint letters.
23 June 2010 Version 5.5 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released A large number (hundreds) of duplicate grammatical entries caused by a gross copy-and-paste error were removed and replaced by all-new entries. Some new grammatical types were added.
16 May 2010 Version 5.4 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The program's vocabulary now contains 12,000 words and phrases.
2 May 2010 Version 5.3 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released The code includes various minor improvements, most of which aren't noticeable by users.
19 September 2009 Version 5.2 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released Program has an enhanced ability to conjugate verbs, which enables it to produce more natural-sounding sentences in certain circumstances.
15 December 2007 Version 5.1 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary is now at 11,000 words and phrases. Punctuation has been modernized in spots.
17 September 2005 Version 5.0 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released After over a decade of development, the program's vocabulary has finally reached a whopping 10,000 words and phrases! Generated complaints should now be funnier than ever.
17 July 2005 Web server upgraded More speed and stability (I hope)
?? April 2004 The automatic complaint-letter generator celebrates its 10-year anniversary! The program has now outlived virtually all other sites from the early days of the Web
2 February 2004 Version 4.9 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 9000 words and phrases! Also, a few minor punctuation problems were corrected.
11 November 2003 Secure HTTP (i.e., https://) support added Can now generate complaints without network snoops being able to see what/whom you're complaining about.
8 November 2003 Permanent new server I'm my own webmaster and have complete control over everything on the server.
19 August 2001 Temporary new server No improvement, just a new server.
5 March 2001 Version 4.7 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 8000 words and phrases!
12 December 2000 Made the program's input-checking more lenient. It is now possible to complain about people who go by their initials. It is also possible to complain about a name written French style (i.e., with the surname in all-uppercase).
26 September 2000 Added new question and answer categories to the program's grammar. Sentences involving questions should flow a lot better.
3 August 2000 Modified form interface and generated URLs to use the word "gender" instead of a particular, 3-letter synonym. Users trapped behind censorware programs and proxies can now use the automatic complaint-letter generator.
5 April 2000 Version 4.2 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 7000 words and phrases!
29 September 1999 Version 4.0 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Introduced, as an experiment, the ability to complain about companies/organizations. Also, restructured the HTML to use a cascading style sheet.
23 September 1999 Version 3.8 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 6000 words and phrases!
7 June 1999 Added a note of explanation to the bottom of each generated complaint. Angry victims will—I hope—stop demanding to know why I have a complaint about them on my Web page.
24 March 1999 Added a BASE HREF to this page's HEAD Netscape users can now access the complaint-letter generator and all the links on this page, even if they incorrectly use a URL that ends in /.
15 January 1999 Completely rewrote form inteface Now possible to specify multiword surnames (e.g., de Joode) and to refer to the victim by title + surname (e.g., Mrs. Smith)
13 January 1999 Modified to reject URLs that end in "/" Eliminates problem that makes all links appear broken. (Hopefully, the 15 Feb 1996 problem is not a problem for the latest batch of browsers.)
26 December 1998 Added a new "mistruth" category to the grammar More variety in the sentences that can be generated
13 November 1998 Deleted over 100 un-funny words and phrases and replaced them with new, funny ones More humorous—and more realistic—complaint letters
5 October 1998 Version 3.5 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 5000 words and phrases!
3 October 1997 Version 3.4 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 4000 words and phrases!
8 December 1996 Version 3.3 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Cleaned up context-free grammar so some sentences should sound more natural
27 November 1996 Version 3.21 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 3000 words and phrases!
12 November 1996 Added workaround for HTTP "Location:" bug that certain browsers suffer from People using brain-damaged browsers will no longer see an outdated, internal URL for this page
29 August 1996 Corrected bug involving check for missing or invalid paragraph count People using stupid browsers or erroneous, home-brewed forms will no longer receive multibillion-paragraph complaint letters
7 August 1996 Version 3.1 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary reached a major milestone: 2500 words and phrases!
18 February 1996 Made usage statistics generator more robust Weird reverse-video glitch is gone
15 February 1996 Modified form to tolerate a spurious trailing "/" in the URL People following incorrect links or using stupid browsers can still generate complaint letters
23 January 1996 Version 3.0 of automatic complaint-letter generator released Program's vocabulary is over 50% larger than before
16 January 1996 CSAG Web server upgraded Response times down & reliability up
?? April 1994 Complaint-letter generator first appears on the Web Users can generate humorous complaint letters from a Web browser
?? 1989 Original (pre-Web) complaint-letter generator written Demonstration that humorous (and often convincing) complaint letters can be generated programmatically