Klaus,
I'd like to ask you to rethink this change about "locked for mouse movement".
Logically, "locked for mouse movement" means that you have marked an object as not movable on the screen (until it is unlocked). This is a very common thing to do - when you get an object where you want it, you want it to stay put and not get accidentally moved.
However, "not movable" is a totally different concept from the concept of "not selectable". I find the two concepts independent.
In v1.44 these two concepts are now forced to be the same. This creates a pretty serious problem from my viewpoint. If an object is not selectable, it can not be selected - sounds obvious right? But if you can't select it, you also can't see it's properties - as you can only see the properties of an object **after** you have selected it.
This effectively means that "not movable" == "not selectable" == "properties are not viewable".
Even on parts of screens sets I have "finished", it is very common to go select an object so I can see it's properties - for example to see what the name of the bitmap image is for the object.
With v1.44, suddenly I can't look a the properties of most of my screen objects - just because they were already "locked for mouse movement".
I think I understand that the goal for the feature was to have a way to have fewer things to choose from in the selection list.
I would like to suggest that a better approach, (one that would still provide the "shrink the number of select choices" goal), would to be to make a new, separate, independent attribute for objects - let's call the new attribute "not selectable". The default for this new attribute should be "selectable" - so that it does not change the way existing screen sets are displayed.
If you did this, I think you could have the new "not selectable" feature without the unfortunate side effect of the current implementation.
This will also require that one carefully think through all the details of all the ways that you can select objects.
here are some examples:
Select all: It is important that "Select **all**" really does select everything - it should ignore the "not selectable" attribute.
Select by rectangle: Should this method select the "not selectable" objects? I could make arguments for both yes and no.
Multiple selects by control and multiple mouse clicks: Is it possible to do this sequence:
click object 1, hold control, go select object 2, find is is not selectable, so make it selectable, then select it, and then go on without loosing the previously selected objects and add more objects to the selection set?
If all this can thought out, and be made to work intuitively, great.
If not, I'd personally prefer to see "can't select locked for movement objects" removed from MS until such time as it can be well thought out and then fully designed.
Dave
Select by boxing anI don't care
Dave
Hello
Version V1.44 is available. New features added:
When a element is locked for mouse move it is now no more selectable. To unlock it, you can use the standard menu “Edit” or context menu (right mouse button) -> unlock single element. To keep the number of the shown selected items small, you can set filters in the type list. If more than 1 element should be unlocked, select the items and press OK. To unlock 1 element you can either select the item and press OK, or doubleclick the item.
Klaus
Machsupport Forum
