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how to SELECT with multiple marquees?


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I have a very basic question which I'm sure I missed in the VW9 manual or earlier discussions. To select many objects in VW8 you held down SHIFT as you selected objects. You could use a number of selection marquees of selecting to get all the objects you wanted selected. In VW9 as you select objects with shift down any objects previously selected get DEselected when within the selection marquee! I can't find the combination of keys or method to only add to selected objects. The present VW9 method only allows you to selectively deselect objects. (Using option-select selects too many objects in many cases)

HenryIt took VW9.5.1 before I would use VW9 because of speed issues; now I'm adapting to the changes.

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I've posted regarding this problem twice, others have also. This is a major problem. Look under old subject "Please follow Mac interface standards" (or something like that). Your description of the problem is accurate.

dual 450mhz G4

823mb ram

dual monitors (ATY,Rage6ag)&(ATY,Rage128y)

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Katie heres a simple example, note, this is not a bug but a change in the way the selection process works.

Draw 3 vertical lines. Draw a marquee around 2 of them to select them. Now you should have 2 selected lines and one unselected. Now hold down the Shift key and draw a selection marquee around all 3, the 2 selected lines will be deselected and the one unselected line will now be selected.

Under VW 8 in the end you would have all 3 lines selected. The use of the shift key would only add to the selection, it would never deselect.

Again, the VW 8 way was more useful for me.

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Now that makes sense.

Here is where I have a question as to what you believe should be the correct way -

If you select something, then click on it again to deselect it, it deselects it. If you already have something selected thru a marquee, then marquee around it, going by theory, it should deselect the objects already selected since you have selected it again.

The way it acted in 8 was as you describe .. but there was no way to deselect an item by clicking on it. You had to click in empty space to deselect an object .. thus deselecting everything you had selected.

To me, the way it works in 9 makes more sense. If you make a mistake, then you can just click on the one object you clicked on rather than having to start back at the beginning and select everything over again.

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From my research, I believe this was a change the engineers made on intension. I've inquired with some folks to see if someone will give a reason as to why the change was made. I'll keep you updated.

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I for one prefer the new method of the selection tool. I was irritated with the 8 method, but there is a caveat to my sycophantic support of the NNA engineers. I would like to have a key combination to choose, because there are times I want the behavior that is desired by the esteemed topic starter. For instance holding shift does it the "9" way and shift control the "8" way.

Don't know if it is techincally possible, but a thought nonetheless.

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If you did want to deselect under VW 8 you could hold down the shift key and single click on an object to deselect it individually( my previous statment was incorrect, that the shift selection couldn't deselect, just the marquee shift selection cannot deselect).

The usefullness of this is hard to describe, I'd just gotten used to working his way. It also worked in conjuction with the option selection, I'd gotten where I could make very accurate selections in some very complex drawings. I haven't been able to get that same level of selection efficiency back.

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To follow long-standing Mac interface standards, holding the Shift key down while selecting is supposed to ADD TO the selection - whether by individual click, "surround" marquee, or "contact" marquee doesn't matter. This is and always has been one of the fundamental interface standards consistent across all Mac applications. Why would you change this.

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This is a becoming a really interesting topic. It has been my experience that the MAC standard has always reflected the modality of the VW9 selection mode. I just opened up a vintage reference, Inside Macintosh Volume 1 pp. I-39&40 entitled "Extending a Selection," and reconfirmed this suspicion. Re-marqueeing a selected object with the shift key depressed will deselect the object. In essence, it acts as a toggle. Even the Finder follows this modality, as does MacDraw, Freehand, Fontographer, Illustrator and a slew of other software packages.

VW has a long-standing history of adding to, not toggling, the selection status of objects that encounter a Shift-Marquee event. I happen to like it the way it has been up through VW8. I am sure if the whole VW community were polled, you would find a fair number of people who support each selection mode.

The solution seems quite simple, this should be a user selectable drawing feature, like the choice given for Click-Drag vs. Click-Click drawing modes.

NNA, please do not change the way we (I) have worked over the last decade. By all means, add new drawing features to the program, but not at the expense of replacing well entrenched features some of us still desire.

Raymond

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I did notice that in my findings, if you marquee around an object without holding the shift key, then marquee around another object and the ones you just selected without holding the shift key, you will now select everything.

VW 9 is much easier and works the way it should logically, however breaking an old habbit is tough to do sometimes. I completely understand that.

Someone (with a little more weight around here than me) should be posting a message up here today as to why they made the change etc etc etc.

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The change in the Marque selection was intended for consistency among current Marque selection methods in other applications on the market today.

We have gotten both positive and negative feedback on this change (mostly positive). At this time we are considering a way to make both methods available. Thanks!

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