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? |
|---|---|---|
| 12 June 2024 | Version 7.5 of the automatic complaint-letter generator released | A new grammatical category, sentence-ending consequences of bad actions, enables greater sentence variety. |
| ?? April 2024 | The automatic complaint-letter generator celebrates its 30-year anniversary! | The program continues to grow older and wiser. |
| 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. |
| ?? April 2014 | The automatic complaint-letter generator celebrates its 20-year anniversary! | The program continues to entertain users after all these years. |
| 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 questionand answercategories 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 victimswill—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 |