Failure to Lock

Dear Xara...

...I find the Locking option you have introduced to be next to unworkable.

At the lowest level, you have to go to the Page & Layer view and somehow determine when the locked item is as Locate clearly cannot be invoked.
The sanest approach to unlock a locked item would be to have a meta-key combo plus a right-click Select (Ctrl+Right-Click).

What is also bad is if you Group or Soft-Group two or more items any subsequent lock of one of them still allows the group to be selected and then the locked item can be manipulated, negating the whole concept of locking position, scaling, skewing or rotating the locked item.

I currently soft-group a small under-shape with the locked item to be able to access the Lock context menu or manipulate the locked shape.
This at least stops an accidental selection as the under-shape or the whole group has to be selected.
I can then also Locate the group in the P&L gallery.

In my mind, a locked shape also ought not have its position on its layer altered.
Using the grouped approach, I can Ctrl+Unselect the unlocked item to then manipulate the order of the locked item.

Acorn

is this something new ?

soft groups have always been manipulate-able unless all of their components are individually locked, on the basis that you can select the group by clicking on an unlocked component and then proceed as normal...

back as far as ver 11 at least

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

is this something new ?
soft groups have always been manipulate-able unless all of their components are individually locked, on the basis that you can select the group by clicking on an unlocked component and then proceed as normal...
back as far as ver 11 at least

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handrawn, the new part was the introduction of a context menu option to lock.

If you have a group with one locked member and select the group and then the context menu, the Unlocked option is ticked even though one item is locked.
Equally, the Locking pop-up shows the same where it could show a trivalent state instead.
It declares "Objects with Lock All applied cannot be selected in Designer or Xara Cloud, so use the Page & Layer Gallery to unlock."
As you point out, and my main premise, is that there is no mention of the exclusions. Another being Solo Mode, alongside the allowed All layers/objects editable icon.

The approach is incoherent.
There is no icon on the Button Palette to toggle lock.
The case is that a locked item also reacts to Auto-Fit when you resize the page. So confusing.

The Help identifies this contradiction:

Quote:

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Unlocked: Object is unlocked, and can be fully edited, resized or moved.Lock All: Object is fully locked and cannot be selected, edited, resized or moved.

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Acorn

Thanks for the explanation - as you know I do not have pro+

leaving aside soft group, if an item is locked you cannot right click and so as stated you would need to use the P&L gallery

traditionally what I do is use the global unlock, use locate to find the item in the gallery, and then relock globally before proceeding any further [I have even been known to do this on a copy file where is was super-critical nothing went pear-shaped]