Selecting objects

[Matthias]

Here comes another quick one: I’d like being able to select objects just by touching them anywhere with the selection marquee. The way Designer (and Illustrator) do it is that you have to have the whole object within the marquee area to select it. The drawback in real life is that you constantly selects lots of other objects you didn’t want rendering the marquee selection useless in most (of my) cases.

 

Maybe a preference toggle to choose between both behaviors?

 

Matthias

[Andy Somerfield]

Hey,

 

Start dragging your marquee, then depress the Ctrl key and continue to drag :)

 

AndyS

[Matthias]

Great thing!

[Matthias]

Hey Andy,

it’s good that the selection option is available. However I think the way you implemented is improvable.

It’s counterintuitive to have to press the modifier key only after the selection started. When I press it before dragging it does it’Í context thing, which is expected. I think this option should work regardless of when you press the modifier key. So why not use the alt key? In this context it is not already in use plus it is the alt key’s very purpose to offer an alternative to a given action.

 

A second thing: I think would be better that by using this option the selection should not be triggered by the bounding box of a given object but instead the actual outline of it. So if I would select a diagonal path by dragging from around its middle area it would be only selected as soon as I hit the actual path, not as early as inches away where its bounding box (which is not the actual object) starts. The way it is implemented now I still do select things i had not intended to, because parts of their bounding box are within the marquee as well.

[MattP]

Alt key is used though - if you started your drag over another object, you would normally just select and move that object, rather than performing a marquee selection. Instead, if you hold down Alt it will not select the object you were over at the start of the drag.

[Matthias]

Holy shit, quite some depth in here which I still don’t have a clue about. Great to have so many selection choices and my apologies for knowing not very much.

 

Still I think the decision to toggle the selection behavior via ctrl key but only after having started to drag is not the best one. But, hey, there’s another key left: The cmd key …

 

And maybe you consider my “second thing” about touching the bounding box vs touching the actual object.

[MattP]

Yes, your comment about the line box vs the wireframe box makes a lot of sense - I'll have a think... :)

[Matthias]

Yes, your comment about the line box vs the wireframe box makes a lot of sense - I'll have a think... :)

 

Having checked the latest beta I supposed you are still thinking, Matt?

 

I still propose some way to select an object by touching its actual outline anywhere rather than touching its bounding box as it works now using the ctrl key. I even propose this should be the default way of selecting objects. 

 

When my marquee tool touches a given object and no other element only this touched object should be selected and not everything else which happens to have its bounding box within the given marquee area, too.

[Clayton]

I agree, touching the outline should be the default; it's better because in general, you don't have to drag as far to select the same group of objects. I've used quite a few vector applications over the years, and I think only one of them used the "contained" marquee rule instead of the "touching" rule. And I'm not even sure if I'm remembering correctly because it was about ten years ago. :)

 

If nothing else, it should be an option in preferences.