Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 43610
BitchX is obnoxious in behaviour and language
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:38:00 EDT
Description of Problem: I know I'm going to get flamed for this, or accused of having no sense of humour, but I think this is just obnoxious. I wouldn't have a problem if it were in source, in comments, in something the user doesn't normally see. But these are all things which bite the "put CD in drive, installed RH, away we go" user. Some of it, s/he won't know about until someone takes pity and tells them. I don't like programs which mock their users. Start it up and your default "name" (which other IRC users see) is "I'm to lame to read BitchX docs" instead of the /etc/passwd entry. How witty. What a funny joke on the user using your software. Quit and don't give it a quit message and you generate a random quit message to the rest of the channel. The contents of the file containing the random messages range from "user abortion with 5 coathooks" to "nice shoes, wanna fuck?". The way to stop this, according to the docs, is to delete that file and replace it with something nicer. It's a system file. Just randomly deleting files from /usr/lib (is that FHS-compliant? It's a plain ascii file: shouldn't it be in /usr/share somewhere? ircii moved a lot of stuff there...) is not an option for people without the root password, and nothing tells them how to create a file that is read instead of it. You don't even know you're -sending- such messages. There are channels some of them won't be appreciated on. I recently pasted someone's /quit message to them when they returned and they were appalled and embarrassed. It's not that I find them objectionable. Well, I do. Although in my case it's not the content: it's the spelling and grammar. Urgh! But that's not the point. It's the fact people don't even know they are trailing these messages behind them. Look in /help and you have the remarkably mature commands "/fuck" and "/shit", among others. I've seen people complain about xboing's user- visible strings: well, these and the others I didn't list are even more likely to generate complaints from some quarters. Yes, I laughed at the idea that "rude" words should be purged from the kernel, but most people don't read that. People are a little more likely to read the help for an IRC client. Start it in gnome-terminal (which I presume is RH's expectation that most users will do, and it does Evil Things: the colours are vile, and the characters are all messed up on the big banner at the top. This is particularly marked if you have set anything such as transparent terminal in gnome-terminal. On quitting, it has supremely mucked up my terminal, too. Lovely stuff. (Answer in FAQ: install rxvt and a particular font. I don't -want- rxvt. I want my gnome-terminal and its normal settings which suit my eyes.) I have a cute screenshot of this: I can attach it if you want. The FAQ contains the superb combination of "Use English..." and "if your speaking Iraqie then..." in two consecutive sentences (and is riddled withsuch misspellings and misunderstandings of "two/too/to" ,not to mention "your/you're", and so on that I feel justified in making this comment, which normally I wouldn't make. Things that would help: * Consider a different default signoff and ircname. It makes you feel stupid to realise everyone has been watching you and many have been laughing, and some of the signoffs are the sort that would embarrass many. * Spell-check it. Including those signoffs and kick excuses. * Fix the mess it makes of my gnome-terminal. * Dump the package altogether. I favour the latter.
you are so right. This software is leaving.
Whoa. Point made :) Consider it dead (we won't ship it anymore). Use epic instead. I don't *think* that one is anything like bx as far as the profanity goes, and it'll probably work better on gnome-term too :) Thanks for the heads up Telsa. Reslolving as rawhide, because there is no "package is dead" option :P Tim
What a way to wake up. T he bugtraq thing generated a nice explosion of emails for me, and I really appreciate them. Notice the sarcasm? Im glad people have the time to devote to the meaningful things in reality, such as whining about the grammar of the documentation of an IRC chat client. From my point of view, nothing that was mentioned here cannot be corrected on the user side, or the side of the developers. Some are simple declarations of variables that are mentioned in the very documentation your associates have complained about. For example, and I wont go into detail, mainly due toe the fact that you may learn something about UNIX and variables if you go figure this out yourself. And being that you discarded a package rather then set some variables, Im not very sure you know how. So Ill give you a few tips. The location of the bitchx.* files is configurable based on a simple variable. Other items complained about were; 1. Bitchx.quit being obnoxious Its ASCII, redhat can freely change it, they dont have to use our example config files 2. The commands /fuck and /shit They can be altered in the source if you really want to get down to it, but 89% of irc clients use the terminology 'shitlist' so, changing that would be simply silly, as for /fuck, it is an accurate description of what the command does. I mean, I could change it to /idontlikeyouandimsorryihavetodothisbutcouldyoupleaseleavemealonethankyougood bye But well, then you're just being silly, most people never even use the /fuck command, and it can be removed if you really feel the need, from the source, and from the simple to edit help file. 3. Bitching about the gnome terminal display Just set your damn terminal up right, I use the gnome, and it works fine for me, but then, I'm not lazy enough to click, and when it doesnt work as I want it to, blame the programmers who wrote it, instead of myself. Its a user side configuration 4. The FAQ, has 'bad English' so? Its written by the man whom I personally dislike/distrust, and threes no love lost between us, but he is an American. I'm sorry if his use of poor grammar and spelling offends some people ever- sensitive eyes. 5. Mocking the user? We mock ourselves, not the user, those who take themselves too seriously, as the author of this lovely bugtraq article seem to, are the point of are satire. If you cant laugh at yourself, then sir, you shouldnt be on irc. 6. Offensive Language in your distro. Have you even looked at the Linux kernel? Enough said. And last, but not least. If you cannont handle some jocular profanity, then why would you want to run a program called "BitchX" in the first place. Its sort of ironic to complain about profanity inside of a program whose name is in itself, a profanity. I doubt this man would be able to handle 20 minutes in most IRC chat rooms, people would be 'So gosh darn rude, like, for sure!' </flame> Robert F. Durdle Documentation/Quality Control The BitchX Project
dumbass, go back to windows
First of all, I was reading the article posted, and yet have I seen something put so ignorant. For one, BitchX is a client, not a Rated-PG movie. Second of all, and who are you people to judge? Redhat is by far the worst OS I have ever seen, so instead of "shipping" BitchX out with the package, don't bother shipping Redhat at all. I'd also like to put so eloquently, The user has the control to change *ANY* setting, however I take is you don't understand how.So, I suggest getting your facts straight before you post horrible subjects due to a clients 'Language' and what we call 'Un-noticable' bugs. The way I see it, the Redhat Team is too ignorant to read BitchX.doc -- Michael Lombardi myke@neglected.net -bitchx project P.S. Kindly have timp@redhat.com spellcheck this for me, I left my websters dictionary at home.