Micro-mini Review of Lipsum text generator

[cranioscopical]

Basic Info:

App Name	Lipsum
App URL	http://lipsum.sourceforge.net/
App Version Reviewed	2.0 for Windows
Test System Specs	Windows XP Pro SP3 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66GHz 4Gb RAM nVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Supported OSes	Windows, and any others that support Python.
Support Methods	Through the web site one can contact the author and/or access the forums.
Pricing Scheme	Lipsum is free.
Reviewer Donation Link	Click here to donate to the DonationCoder site fund.
Relationship btwn. Reviewer and Product	REVIEWER: Merely a happy user of this free software.

Intro:

Virtually any designer who works much with text will be familiar with Lorem ipsum which is filler text frequently used in page layouts. Lipsum expands on this and generates meaningless filler text that a designer can use to populate layouts for typographical work, web pages, etc. This dummy content gives a good view of how the layout will look, regardless of subject matter.


 

 


Who is this app designed for:

Anyone working with layouts that will ultimately be filled with meaningful text. In this circumstance, it is useful to deploy text that has no particular meaning, the purpose being to see whether the layout itself will be pleasing to the eye, properly balanced and so forth.


The Good

Lipsum will use text already on the clipboard if so desired. More importantly it also comes pre-populated with a variety of texts (including Lorem ipsum). Thanks to a very simple, relatively unobtrusive interface, with a few large buttons, one can choose quickly whether to use text from the clipboard or any one of the preset texts. Further, one can choose the number of paragraphs to generate as well as the length of those paragraphs. Another useful benefit is the ability to generate texts in a variety of languages. The chosen text is then sent to the clipboard  for easy pasting into the layout under construction.


The needs improvement section

I can see no area that needs improvement in the way Lipsum actually functions. It would be a nice bonus were it possible to add other items to the already copious preset texts.


Why I think you should use this product

If you work with layouts using large amounts of textual material, Lipsum will help you preview how your layout will look. This is better than having to work from empty placeholders. Because most of the texts used will be meaningless in the context of the page, it is possible to concentrate on how the layout looks instead being distracted by what the layout says. This is a very important step in the design process.


Conclusions

This is a nice piece of free software to perform quickly a task that will be familiar to those working with text layouts in various media.

[mouser]

Thank you for the review -- sometimes a simple program can still be just the thing to save you some time

[Ath]

That's a nice min-review.

I mis only 1 paragraph, and that's a comparison section, that holds this solution against similar offerings, like a web-based Lorem ipsum generator, ie. what makes this off-line tool one stand out?

[tomos]

Thanks for that Chris  

I have used the site http://www.lipsum.com/ to generate Lorem Ipsum text. You can generate text there by number of paragraphs, words, bytes, or lists (not sure how lists works). It doesnt appear to have any relationship though with your sourceforge app. It's worth a look for a read about the history of usage, along with various translations etc.

What . . . Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Apparently it's from a book by Cicero,
and talks about "this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain" but also knocks people who are "so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue".

Great fun

PS now making a site donation via your link

[cranioscopical]

That's a nice min-review.

I mis only 1 paragraph, and that's a comparison section, that holds this solution against similar offerings, like a web-based Lorem ipsum generator, ie. what makes this off-line tool one stand out?

-Ath (March 11, 2011, 01:22 PM)

Mea culpa 

For me the fact that it is off-line makes it the better choice.
I'm looking at it through my rather blinkered vision as one who has a notable absence of reliable internet access.

Tomos has helped out, fortunately, by pointing out http://www.lipsum.com/.
What he cites there may also help you to understand my shortcomings.

Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s

Whereas I have been the industry's standard dummy for a much shorter time.

[Ath]

Whereas I have been the industry's standard dummy for a much shorter time.

-cranioscopical (March 11, 2011, 04:38 PM)

You are not alone in this I presume

[timns]

This is a great example (and a nice snappy review, Chris!) of something that I never would have dreamed would exist.

This is one of the reasons that I have recently got into the habit of checking Bits du Jour and so on regularly: not so much to find the bargains, more to just see what's out there, in case it's something I never knew I needed, but now need really urgently 

[Renegade]

Certainly an invaluable tool!

I've never seen it before, but as above, have been using the Lipsum.com site.

This is a great example (and a nice snappy review, Chris!) of something that I never would have dreamed would exist.

This is one of the reasons that I have recently got into the habit of checking Bits du Jour and so on regularly: not so much to find the bargains, more to just see what's out there, in case it's something I never knew I needed, but now need really urgently 

-timns (March 11, 2011, 05:15 PM)

Bwahahahaha~!

I know the feeling... Much to the chagrin of my pocketbook~!

[Ath]

Is the site DoCo'd already? (Just like Slashdotted, but by DoCo users alone), can't get the page to show it gives an 'Error 503 Service Unavailable, Guru Meditation...' message.
Seems the service has rebooted and now it's working again.

[Arizona Hot]

I got into this recently when trying to get the LibreOffice extension to work(I couldn't). I found the original Latin text of  "De finibus bonorum et malorum " by Cicero" (all 5 sections). I prefer the Latin text to lipsum's gibberish. I found a few other things also. I know there is a Wikipedia article, but it is longer and this is a Quick Reply.