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

[Know1]

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.

[handrawn]

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

[Know1]

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

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.

[handrawn]

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

[Know1]

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.

[Fred C]

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

[handrawn]

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...

[Know1]

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

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...

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

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.
In the grand scheme of things it's not important. I'll let it go and move on.