AutoInsult Documentation

This is an abridged version of the product documentation

Usage

Main window

AutoInsult is (we hope) really simple to use. Just choose the type of insult you want from the tabs at the top. An insult will be generated.

You can then hit "Generate" to generate another. When you have the perfect insult, press "Copy" (or use Ctrl-C) to copy it to the clipboard. Most Windows applications support "Cut & Paste" of text and should accept the insult text when you choose "Paste" (usually from a right-click menu).
If you have AutoCopy turned on then every time you hit "Generate" then a "Copy" will automatically take place as well.

If you press "Generate" and then decide you want to go back to a previously-generated insult then use the back button.

If AutoInsult generates a word or phrase that you are not familiar with then you can use the new "Dictionary Lookup" feature to look it up in the on-line dictionary at www.dictionary.com. Obviously you need to be connected to the internet to make use of this feature.

If you are having trouble creating the perfect insult, then use the "Switch Mode" button to switch to the Advanced View where you can use the drop-lists to choose from all the words and phrases available for the current style.

Click "Info" to call up an "About" box which, amongst other things, will allow to you jump straight to the AutoInsult web site or send us some mail.

Use the "Timed Insults" button to enable pop-up insults (see later).

Options Menu

The options menu gives you the following options:

Preferences	- calls up the Preferences Dialog (See below)
Timed Insults	- identical to pressing the "Timed Insults" button.

Preferences Dialog

This lets you set various preferences that control some of the behaviour of AutoInsult:

• The number of insults to generate each time. Set this to be between 1 and 500.
• Whether or not AutoInsult is always on top. Useful when you're doing several cut & pastes, we find.
• Whether or not to capitalise the initial word of each sentence. This is useful if you want to paste your insult into an email as part of a sentence, rather than a new one.
• Whether to turn on AutoCopy or not. AutoCopy automatically does a "Copy to clipboard" every time an insult is generated (ie. you press "Again Please!")
• Whether to turn ToolTips on or off.
• The offensiveness level. At the moment this either enables or disables the Modern and Mediterranean insult styles. In the future it may enable or disable sets of words.
• Whether or not to remember the size of main window between sessions.
• Whether or not to use SmartInsult indexing.
• A "Reset" button to reset the SmartInsult indexes

Some people have been offended by parts of AutoInsult, mainly by the Modern and Mediterranean insult styles. This is ok, as not everyone's humour overlaps completely. Some people find the Arabian and Shakespearean styles funny, but not the Modern and Mediterranean insult styles. Because of this we have built in an option to disable or enable them. In the future we plan to have word sets that will be enabled or disabled for the Arabian style, but for now, the insult level only controls whether or not the Modern and Mediterranean insult style insult tabs are enabled or not.

Pop-up insults

This feature allows you to specify a timer interval of, say, 10 seconds, and then every 10 seconds an insult will be popped up. Whilst pop-ups are working, the main AutoInsult window is hidden and an icon added to your system tray. To get back to the main window just double-click on the icon. You can also right-click on the icon to get a menu.
You can pause pop-ups by single-clicking on the icon. If you want to generate an insult whilst paused (or can't want for the next scheduled insult!), just select "generate" from the right-click menu.

The pop-up insult box has been designed not to interrupt your work. For the technically-minded, this is because we have deliberately used a modeless dialog box that does not take focus when raised. This should mean that you won't suddenly find your cursor taken somewhere else whilst you're in the middle of typing and an insult pops up.
If you're in the middle of something and are finding the insults distracting, you can hit the "Pause" button to pause the timer, and "Resume" to resume (or single-click on the tray icon). Closing the pop-up box with the close icon (in the top-right on the box) will return you to the main window.

To alter the style of insult used during pop-ups, simply return to the main window, select the style you want, and then restart timed insults.

You use pop-up insults by either pressing the "Timed Insults" button, or by selecting "Timed Insults" from the "Options" menu.

SmartInsult

AutoInsult does more than blindly generate random insults! Unlike some other programs, each field within an insult phrase (there are usually between 3 and 6 of these) is individually indexed. AutoInsult then makes sure that the same index doesn't occur again until all indexes have been used up. So you shouldn't see "May 1,000 horny devils blow their noses on your duvet" then "May 1,000 horny lawyers blow their noses on your duvet" as '1,000', 'horny', 'blow their noses' and 'on your duvet' would all have been excluded the 2nd time round. We think this is a major improvement over previous versions.
Please note that when you exit AutoInsult, all indexes are dropped, so closing down AutoInsult and restarting it will reset all fields. In short, you may see repeated words or phrases if you run it again immediately after.
You can turn SmartInsult indexing on & off in the Preferences dialog box. You can also reset the indexes using the "Reset" button in the Preferences dialog box, thus allowing previously seen words and phrases to be seen again.

Dictionary Lookup

A new feature for v3.5. Simply put your cursor over a word and right-click on it to bring up the context menu. Select "Dictionary Lookup" and AutoInsult will launch your default browser and look up the word at www.dictionary.com. Obviously you'll need a live internet connection in order to do this.
The dictionary lookup works equally well with phrases - just pre-select the phrase before right-clicking as above.

The Styles

Shakespearean

Obviously the Shakespearean style is inspired by the Great Bard, William Shakespeare.

Mediterranean

Marcin Oseka has this explanation for the Mediterranean style:

"A very strong belief in family values unites the nations of the Mediterranean Basin: there is no worse insult in Italy than calling a man 'cornutto', which means 'betrayed by his wife'. Family is a source of pride in those societies, and an insult aiming at the women in the family (mothers, sisters, wives) is often deemed worse than a stab in the back. Such an insult can never be forgiven. The tradition of women and indeed insults aimed through them at their male protectors (sons, husbands, brothers) radiates from southern Europe to countries spiritually based upon Catholicism and Greek-Roman cultures. Those nations who have turned their backs to Rome see women and the family differently; in Anglo-Saxon and Protestant countries, where 'son-of-a-bitch' can be used as a comma, no-one will be knifed because of the Mediterranean insult."

Modern

The Modern style is just a straightforward insult. It doesn't really follow a set pattern.

Arabian

This isn't so much an insult as a mild curse.

Feedback, Support and Discussion

As of June 2005, we are encouraging all users to use our new forum system at www.coruscant.co.uk/fora for feedback, support and discussing AutoInsult-related issues. You can even post your favourite insults there!

We monitor the fora regularly and will try to answer all questions as quickly as possible.

The Future

We have plans for AutoInsult! At some stage (timescale unknown), we plan to add the following:

• More words (of course)
• The ability to Net Message / WinPopup an insult to someone over your network.
• Voice support. AutoInsult will be able to speak the insults to you.
• Support for add-on word sets, once the AutoInsult Editor (see below) is ready to ship.
• Versions of AutoInsult for other platforms like WinCE, Mac and Linux. Some of these are already progressed to the "proof of concept" stage.
• The AutoInsult Editor (see below)

The AutoInsult Editor

The AutoInsult Editor will let you add words to the current styles, and also add complete new styles of your own.
It is currently in the state of an internal tool that imports a text file and creates the core word libraries, so is not ready to be used externally yet.
We plan to create an easy-to-use User Interface around this that will enable you to create your own word sets. However, due to other commitments, this has been put on the back-burner for now. We're not sure when it will be ready as is going to require a lot of effort both in itself and modifying AutoInsult to use extra libraries.

Acknowledgements

AutoInsult was conceived, designed and written by Jon Roch-Berry ("JonRB") and is published by Coruscant Ltd.

The resources for the Shakespearean insults were found on the web.  There are many sites that generate these insults. Some sites credit Jerry Maguire of Center Grove High School, Greenwood Indiana, as being the originator of the list of words.

A small proportion of the modern words came from an old MS-DOS program called "Insults" (original name, huh?) from the Modern Advisory Institute, Utah. Incredibly we still had a copy of it on a floppy disk.

Likewise some of the Arabian insult words came from Paul Levin. Unfortunately his Arabian Insult page is no longer available but his home page is at http://www.evilcripple.com/

A proportion of the Mediterranean insult words came from Marcin Oseka, and also the explanation of the Mediterranean style.

All the other words came from JonRB's own sick head!

The pictures for the Arabian style and Mediterranean came from a now-defunct website called www.internet-stuff.com. As far as we are aware all the pictures we have used are royalty-free and have no restrictions that prevent us from including them in this application.

We consider all the words to be in the Public Domain (especially the Modern, Arabian and Mediterranean ones, which are all either in the dictionary or recognised as being in common verbal usage) and do not feel that we have infringed anyone's copyright. If you disagree then please contact us. Any trademarks used in the word list are acknowledged as belonging to their owners. Whilst we acknowledge the words themselves to be in the Public Domain, we retain copyright on AutoInsult's data files. You may not use them for your own programs.