Marque select one object within a soft group selects the whole soft group

I don't know if this is wrong or if it's supposed to work this way, but I find it odd.

Drag a bounding box around one object in a Soft Group and the entire Soft Group gets selected.
I'd expect the Soft Group to be ignored unless the entire Soft Group is within the marquee selection, like how a normal group behaves.

Attachment 125065

what is happening [i think] is that you are including one of the soft group objects in your marque selection - that will select the whole soft group, one of the ways soft groups differ - part of their 'softness' is the ability to select and move just one object in the group, and the rest goes with it

see post #4

Try Select inside; Control +left click.
Also check out Help>Editing text if you want to get to the text directly. Multiple clicks allow choice of word, line or paragraph.
HTH

I guess re-reading what I said its not that clear the difference..

a normal group is automatically stacked together - you need to marque it all to select - it is really one 'object'

a soft group does not have to be stacked together the objects can be anywhere, indeed the included objects can be on different layers - therefore in order to select them all you only need to select one [apart from anything else you can't select across layers in the normal way]

When you marquee select you are trying to get everything inside the marquee selection and ignore what's outside it, with Soft Groups it adds more.

I'm working on a website where there is a shadow underneath images and I've soft grouped the image and shadow together so the image itself exports as a JPG and the shadow as a PNG. When I try to marquee objects close to the Soft Group, I keep selecting the tiny shadow object and therefore the entire Soft Group. I keep expecting the Soft Group to be ignored in my selection.

I guess it's a minor annoyance, and it doesn't actually break anything on the page like some of the other stuff I've encountered.

My thoughts on it:

For a single click on a Soft Group, sure, select the Soft Group.
Shift click on the Soft Group? Go ahead and add it to the selection you already have.
With a marquee selection that isn't around the entire Soft Group I think it shouldn't get selected.

You guys think the entire Soft Group should get selected for a partial marquee selection just because one object happens to be inside the marquee?

Marquee select selects all objects. If one of those objects selected is a soft group, the entire soft group is included in the selection.

Fred C's solution is the way to select individual objects in a group or soft group.

If you need to edit the objects in a soft group, the simplest way to do this is remove the soft group. Make your changes and adjustments, then Apply Soft Group again.

yes - because this is one of the reasons for using a soft group as opposed to a normal group - though I am not looking at it from a website point of view...

I understand what you are saying - ie you do NOT want ANY of the soft group selected - maybe lock it first?

Soft Groups were designed to always select all members, on different layers, in Solo mode, locked or not. [Locking a Soft-Group all elements requires individual element selection].

Quote:

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Selecting one member of a Soft Group also selects all other members of the same Soft Group – even members that are on invisible or locked layers. This means when you delete, move, rotate or otherwise transform one member of a Soft Group, all the other members are similarly modified.

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I get round it by using the Page & Layer gallery and the Ctrl key. Not a great solution.

You can, however, also temporarily group a number of elements of a Soft-Group with Ctrl+Clicking as above and then Group (Ctrl+G). This decouples the elements so they are still in the Soft-Group and the selection of any other non-group element selects the whole Soft-Group but crucially a selection of the grouped elements only selects the sub-Group. This allows moving the Soft-Group, the sub-Group or any selected element independently. Just select the sub-Group and Ungroup (Ctrl+U) to restore the Soft-Group.

I think this help with partial marquee selections involving a Soft-Group.

Acorn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fred C

Try Select inside; Control +left click.
Also check out Help>Editing text if you want to get to the text directly. Multiple clicks allow choice of word, line or paragraph.
HTH

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You cannot Select Inside for more than one object in a Soft-Group.

Acorn

no thinking about it locking would not work of course silly me

Thanks for the replies. I don't think I'm clear enough about what I meant.

I'm not trying to select a Soft Group and I'm not trying to select inside a Soft Group to edit anything.

The Lorem Ipsum text in my original example (which is not part of the Soft Group) is what I want to select with a marquee selection.
So my example points out that when the marquee selection just so happens to include an object that's inside a Soft Group, the Soft Group also gets selected.

So my issue is that the Soft Group gets selected at all.

sure I think that past by some.. but my point is that is the way soft groups are designed to work - if they were the same as ordinary groups there would be little point in having them - they are 'linked' objects, select one you select them all

edit: for example say you have a mass of objects and you only want to select three, but because of the positioning marque selection would select dozens - if the three are soft grouped you only need find and click the one, and they do not need to be on the same layer stacked together as in a normal group would have to be

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

if the three are soft grouped you only need find and click the one

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Yes, with a click on one of the three objects that are part of a Soft Group all three should get selected, I agree with you there. That's a deliberate act to select the Soft Group.
Same goes for a shift click on one of the three objects to add the Soft Group to a selection.

A marquee selection is different. Its purpose is to only select what's inside the marquee completely.
A Soft Group should still be treated as a Group, as one object selection wise. If it's not entirely inside the marquee, ignore it and don't add it to the selection.

not sure I agree, click was just an example - if you want to select the soft group and other objects as well then marquee applies - basically you cannot have it both ways, I would not want to lose that function

Let's say all the blurry dots are part of a Soft Group. And I want to marquee select just the three squares.
Well, now I can't do that. There will always be a small blurry dot in the marquee selection, and therefore the entire Soft Group of blurry dots will also be selected.


Attachment 125068

Geez...Just Shift select each rectangle ; forget the Marquee

or use the gallery to select / deselect after

I have a whole list of things in xara that annoy me such as:

double click switches tool - some of us can do this accidently all too frequently
you can add items to a locked layer.. I am suprised my ctrl+Z keys are not worn out
drag and drop a bitmap and accidently hit another bitmap it is replaced .. no no no

to name but three [and I object to bitmaps being called photos on principle as most of mine are not plus they would not benefit from being turned into jpeg thank you very much]

I understand this is in the nature of the beast - one person's useful feature is another person's irritation

at least with xara you have the option to restrict marquee to whole object inclusion most of the time... unlike some other programs...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fred C

Geez...Just Shift select each rectangle ; forget the Marquee

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In this example, yes. The objects are big enough.

For a website I've got a line underneath headers, but there is also a background rectangle and a Soft Grouped image present.
I'm now doing the variants so I have to move a lot of things around the page to make it all fit.

So Shift clicking in most cases will select the background and not the small line unless I zoom in each time. So a marquee selection around the entire line is the tool for the job. Which is now crippled by the way Soft Groups interfere.

And I can't just group the objects temporarily that I want to keep together because of the bug that makes the other objects also turn into links when you ungroup again...
Or find out that the MouseOver state is now permanently on the mouseOff layer...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

I understand this is in the nature of the beast - one person's useful feature is another person's irritation

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Yes, this has turned into a personal irritation, because I've tried to find ways around it, just to find bugs by simply grouping objects and ungrouping again.


I did not expect this thread to grow like this, maybe one or two comments and that would be the end of it. :eek:
In the grand scheme of things it's not important. I'll let it go and move on.