# from David Christian Berg # on Monday 23 January 2006 07:26 am:
professionals will only want to embed, the home users will only want to import. If a pro wants to import, he'll know, what to do, so no problem...
I disagree. It's not a question of whether you know what to do. Removing an item from the menu based on a preference setting is bad for discoverability. Advanced users will be familiar with the concept of linking, but shouldn't have to explore the preferences to discover that Inkscape can do that. Less advanced users become advanced users by following their curiosity. If you hide it, they won't get curious.
Trying something to see what it does is much different than our current situation, where users think they know what import means and then get bitten because the menu is essentially lying to them.
I completely expect home users not to need the "place" feature.
That's not a good assumption to make. Users may want a feature once they know it is there and understand what it does. Hiding it from them because you think they won't need it is too condescending. Just make it transparent, obvious, and discoverable. If I tried to sell hammers without a claw because I thought my market wouldn't need to pull nails, I wouldn't sell many hammers.
Maybe you could just have the place menu turned of by default and turn it on without hiding the import menu item. Turning it on will then automatically also change the drag and drop behaviour to place...
Again, there is no reason to have preferences changing behavior like this. Advanced users will realize that a button-1 D&D probably does the simplest thing. A message in the status bar should be able to inform you of what will happen to the dragged item. Ctrl+D&D or button-2 D&D will link and I think that's what advanced users will expect to happen.
--Eric