Interesting, I have never had a a rip that required a menu for subtitle support.
If the film is entirely one language, it's generally not a problem.
It's when the film uses many languages and is only supposed to subtitle the non-primary language that it becomes problematic.
Without menu support you either have all subtitles or no subtitles, rather than only getting subtitles for the (for example) non-English parts.
With Blu-ray it seems more common to either have the subtitles burned into the video (a practice I am not a fan of) or to have a completely separate subtitle track which only contains subtitles for the non-English parts.
With DVD it seems to have been more common to have a single English subtitle track, and the menus control whether it is played in its entirety, or selectively enabled/disabled.
It does still happen with Blu-ray though, that method of handling it just seems to be less frequently used.
And it's not just the low budget indie European films which are affected - the last disc I remember this being a problem was
The Mummy of all films, since it mixes English, Arabic, and Ancient Egyptian - basically unwatchable for us without having subtitles on for the entire film. Though I don't personally mind it, I think we ended up watching something else.