hi bkf1
well, if you have seen the scribus code and have an idea about how UI decision are taken, i think it's not that hard to guess why the scribus UI is not as good as it could be (ehm ehm ehm).
- as a programmer you create a feature as a prototype. and the hardest part is to get all the edge cases right. a basic UI is enough: we can improve it later. and later is... well... later
- when the programmer does not use the product (much), he will have a hard time doing the right UI decisions. imo, the worst offenders in scribus are the choices done by completeness (there are a few features that are completely useless, but they have been added because theoretically it's the same as other features that are useful).
- in the same spirit, if you create something, which is in a similar part of code as something else, you will put it next to that one in the UI. exposed in a similar way. there is nothing that could possibly go wrong. or not?
- finally, when many people have complained about how ugly the interaction is, the programmers somehow gets it, that it's time to do some changes. but there are already so many wires behind the scene that would have to be changed, that we will do that when we do that planned feature (which needs a new UI). of course, the planned feature will take much longer to get out of the planning stage...
ah, then you will have all those user complaining because you have changed something and now they cannot keep thy crazy habits (that were needed because the UI was terrible... but now they are used to it and produced workarounds they can live with).
so: it takes much effort to create a good UI. and, sadly, we have too few people, who care about a good UI and -- at the same time -- have the patience to stay on it for a couple of years and make things change.
but one such person is here and with a bit of luck (after many months of efforts!) we will see a big improvement soon!
p.s.: the considerations above are not specific to scribus but apply to many projects where UI is a second class citizen... and there are many such projects, not only in the open source world.