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

[Christoph Schäfer]

> I think maybe I was just posting in excessive brevity.  In principle, I 
> agree with what you say, but this whole discussion you raised in 
> essence, just "proves your rule" ("prove" in its original meaning, like 
> "Pr?fung"), since this led to the reintroduction of Sample Text in the 
> context menu, many people including myself understanding what a context 
> menu is, and why a context menu is a useful thing.

<kidding>
WOW, that was ... quite long for an English sentence. Hope you didn't 
make the mistake to learn German and by that took to our bad habit of 
building *endless* sentences. ;)
</kidding>


> And I don't think 
> it's all over yet -- it's still unclear what else should be in the 
> context menu and what might be deleted.

No, it certainly isn't. There is at least one really ugly aspect of 
scribus' context menu, namely "adjust frame to picture". It would be OK 
if the contrary was also available, but currently you have to move to 
the properties menu. Here, Quark does better (finally a nice word on 
QXP). But this is already in the bugs and IIRC on the roadmap.

> I agree with you about Windows title bar menus -- you just wonder what 
> the designers were smoking when they came up with those layouts. They 
> pretty obviously were not talking to users.

Just guessing, but maybe you don't understand Microsoft. You can trace 
this back to the DOS era. They always/mostly provided worse products 
than others, and exactly this was part of their success. Learning to use 
MS appliations with all their flaws was not easy, but once people were 
familiar with them and the dozens of workarounds, it was hard to turn 
back the tide. It was the same for developers: DOS and Windows were/are 
so ugly that ISVs had to invest large sums for manufacturing DOS/Windows 
software. These products were almost impossible to port to another 
platform (guess why they were fighting Netscape and Java tooth and 
nail!). Even MS Office for Mac OS is not a port, but a completely 
different product. Moreover, MS/Windows shortcomings caused the rise of 
whole new industry -- think about antivirus, file fixing, or system 
repair software. Imagine we had the same situation in pharmacy or 
aeroplanes ...

So, no, they never really talked to their customers. They only added 
more bells and whistles to somehow keep up with Apple, but usability and 
clean APIs were never part of their corporate culture.


Christoph