[Scribus] insert lorem ipsum: back to context menu?

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Louis,

[snip]

> Actually, this could be looked at as a very good example of redundancy. 
> Something we should probably want to avoid in Scribus. I say "should" 
> because I know it's easier to say than to do and Scribus is not 
> redundancy-free.

You're right, of course, and in many cases it's impossible to avoid 
redundancy. Taking care of usability means tracking issues and 
discussing them until a reasonable solution is found.

[snip]

> Why is there a Step and Repeat and a Super Step and Repeat is a nonsense 
> to me. I aknowledge the reason is historical, since it took years to get 
> the Super Step and Repeat. So Quark decided to add the new dialog and 
> not simply add to the existing Step and Repeat. Now, this could be 
> improved (simplified) in Scribus. Just an opinion... no nightmare! :)

Maybe the term "nightmare" was a bit exaggerated, but there are so many 
flaws in Quark's UI that made me use it. You're probably right that the 
current UI has historically "grown" so this might be an explanation, 
nightmare or not :)

> The post from Peter Nermander is very interesting imo on that particular 
> part of the issue. Especially the discussion about the mouse movements 
> and clicks and how to access the menus. "Page layout" is very different 
> from "Word processing" in that respect. His post is well worth reading. :)

Yes, it is, and I think he has it right in most aspects. Personally, I 
use context menu as much as shortcuts, so I think there shouldn't be a 
priority for one way or the other, especially since both are not 
mutually exclusive. scribus' context menu and the properties palette are 
really powerful tools that make life easier as much as shortcuts.

> These could be 
> part of the few "rules" we could set to discuss the usability and 
> productiveness of Scribus. Again, I strongly support Craig R.'s view on 
> this and I think we'd be better discussing each issue in the bug 
> tracker, at some point. :)

Yes, I also do, but it certainly does no harm to discuss these issues on 
list as well :)

Maybe it would be useful to have a basic set of rules to be followed. 
Commercial vendors and other FOSS projects do have them, mostly called 
"human interface guidelines", or, more precisely, usability is part of 
the higs. From what I have read here, the first two rules to be applied 
would be: 1) avoid redundancy, if possible and 2) avoid mousetrips to 
the menu in layout operations, if possible.

Cheers,

Christoph