Please follow Mac standards

[broesler]

Option-drag to select any object touched works fine, but trying to add to the selection by holding down the Shift key and Option-dragging will deselect anything previously selected. This is terribly frustrating and contrary to long-standing Mac standards. Please, reconsider going back to the standard mode as implemented in VW prior to v9. Thanks.

[Guest]

Option+shift drag select works the same way it always have. Any object the marquee line touches and object(s) inside of the marquee will be selected. If you happen to marquee a select few objects, then marquee another select few objects while still holding down the option+Shift keys, then an object that was selected in the first group will then be deselected in the second group. This is the way the selection tool marquee has always worked.

THe first time you select an object, it's included, the second time that same obejct is selected, it turns the selection off - deselects it.

Please be careful that you do not hold down the option key only when selecting an object as this will duplicate the object on top of itself. When you go to marquee it, it may not select it since there are two objects there really, with one selected (the first object that you duplicated) and the second object. YOu could be selecting one and not the other however the selection handles are fooling you.

[MikeB]

Katie,I have to agree with broesler on this one. The selection behavior was changed in the switch from VW 8 to VW 9. It used to be that with the Option / Shift selection didn't ever deselect, it only selected.

And I too miss the old functionality.

[broesler]

Katie, thanks for your reply, and for your attention to the bulletin board over the past few months. It is indeed nice to get a reasonably rapid response to posted comments. However, I must beg to differ with you on this issue.

I have been a user (on Mac) since the Blueprint 4 days and have thousands of hours of time working with the program. When 9.0 came out the functionality described in my original post changed. As a test to verify I'm not crazy I have created identical documents in 8.5.2 and 9.5.1. Each document contains a simple series of parallel lines and text notation of the line weights. In 8.5.2 and 9.5.1 option-dragging will select anything the marquee touches, as it should. In 8.5.2 if you then shift-option-drag over the existing selection and addtional objects it will add the new items and not deselect the previous (as it always has). However, in 9.5.1 if you shift-option-drag over any portion of the previous selection it will de-select any object previously selected (as you agree). This is a change between 8.5.2 and later versions and is not consistent with long-standing Mac standards. In all Mac applications, holding down the shift key will add to the existing selection. I personally find this one erratic behavior frustrating enough (in combination with Epson's 1520 not working under OSX or even Classic) that I continue to use 8.5.2 under OS9.2.2. Please request the engineering team to consider returning the standard Mac operation functionality of shift-+ selection adding to the existing selection, not deselecting. I can't believe I am the only user that finds this a problem. Response by NNA to a previous post on this subject indicated the function was changed as described because of user request. If any other users out there have an opinion on this, please post a response.

[Guest]

Bonus points for the two of you !

Of course in my testing here, I didn't try it with several objects in VW 8.x where the marquee had selected an object, and drew another marquee that touched an object already selected. I stand corrected.

I'll submit this to "the guys in the back" as Matt likes to call them, and see if I can get a better reason for why it was changed.

[Joe Newell]

Oh and by the way...

Is it possible (or has it been fixed in a newer version) to have a selection process whereby when you use a marquee to select a number of objects by "crossing" them, you can avoid selecting objects which are off the screen and invisible but whose grips (rectangular array) fall within the marquee and so are unknowingly selected and modified as well. Too many times I have moved things all over the place when I wanted them to stay put.