What is Lipsum?

What is Lipsum?

Lipsum is a random text generator what is especially useful for those, who're creating web designs, typographical layouts, etc.
Lipsum is released under the terms of the Python Software Foundation License. The application itself is coded in Python, one of the greatest programming languages and uses the wxPython toolkit for the GUI.
Here are some simple screenshots of the second release of Lipsum:

• It's a multi-platform application. Lipsum is written in Python with the use of the wxPython toolkit, so you don't have to face with compatibility problems.
• It's small and fast. Of course, the task of Lipsum is not the most important part neither in the web-design, nor in other areas. That's why Lipsum tries to be a very fast and simple-to-use application. The entire program takes about 100 Kb of your disk (the pure Python version.). Nice, isn't it?
• It's easy to use. The entire text generation can be done with 5(!) clicks of your mouse. Lipsum has 3 central buttons and an all-in-one popup menu what you can call with your right mouse-button. With these controls, text generation will never be easier.
• It comes with some fancy lipsum sources. The Lipsum package contains some interesting texts, including poems in different languages (by this time in english, german, french, italian, spanish, hungarian and esperanto). These can be the sources of your lipsum text. So if you have enough from 'Lorem ipsum', you can use them as a source.
• It can use YOUR text as a lipsum. Lipsum can use the text what you type or paste in its textbox as a random-text source. And Lipsum uses the XML technology for its lipsum sources. The Lipsum package contains a template XML and its DTD file, so even you can create your own lipsum file from the text you love the best. (Imagination is the only limit.)

Who needs Lipsum?

Web designers, Typhographical designers

All web designers have to face with the problem, when they're ready with a design and they have to get simple meaningless bunch of text.
That's when you have some possibilities:

• Type the word 'blah' and then copy&paste it 1000 times to imitate some text
• Go to a website and copy some text from anywhere and paste it into the design plan.
• Go to the online random text generators' homepage and generate some lipsum there
• Download Lipsum from SourceForge and use that as a generator

The second and third option applies only if you're working online. When you do not have internet connection, then definitely Lipsum is your choice.

What is Lorem ipsum, anyway?

The question could be answered by a reference from Wikipedia: "Lorem ipsum (lipsum for short) is the standard placeholder text used in the publishing and graphic design industry. ... When text is readable, viewers tend to focus on what the words say, so when displaying a typeface or a design, publishers use lorem ipsum to make people focus on the typeface or design and not on the content. Additionally, lorem ipsum has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters as is seen in English. This also helps to get people to not focus on the content."

Why do we need an application for that?

There's a couple of very good and useful text generators on the internet. The only problem that they cannot be used offline. So if someone needs some quick blah-blahs to fill his/her actual design plans, Lipsum can be a very useful tool.

But why should I use this 'Lorem ipsum' stuff?

You don't have to stick to Lorem ipsum. Lipsum comes with some other popular texts used for random text generation, so the results can different either.