Separate selection step from click-and-drag

Hi Jay,

yes, that is totally possible :)
Hold the Alt key down when clicking to move the current selection only and not select anything else.

See also:
https://inkscape.org/en/doc/keys091.html#d0e2615

Kind Regards,
 Maren

That's useful to know, but I'm hoping to change the default behavior: Don't drag anything unless I've explicitly selected it first, in a separate step. The existing behavior usually catches me by surprise, and it would seem extreme for me to get in the habit of pressing ALT every time I drag something.

Hi Jay,

this is currently not possible, but you can post a feature request for this (maybe settable in the preferences?) in our bug report section.

But think about this, and if possible, provide an answer to it in your feature request:
How would you de-select objects then, in a standard way?

I think it would be uncomfortable to have people have to press a button or perform some other action to release the current selection, instead of just choosing a different object or no object.

Kind Regards,
 Maren

I wouldn't expect such a setting to change the existing selection processes at all, except for the single case where I click and drag. Simply clicking on another object would still select it, and the existing Shift-click or ALT-click operations wouldn't change.

I simply want Inkscape to stop selecting an item I haven't already selected when I do a click-and-drag. This would allow two things:

- I could drag an existing selection from a point that overlapped an unselected object. (I haven't seen documentation on this, but how Inkscape selects snap points when dragging seems to depend upon where I've gripped the selection I'm dragging; "snap center of object" seems more reliable when I grip near the center point to begin with.)

- I could draw a selection rectangle around small objects on top of a background object, without first having to move the cursor past the edge of the background object or lock its layer.

Thanks for your information. I'll look at a feature request.

Thanks for your explanations, Jay!

(For my own workflows, I'm hoping this isn't going to be implemented, or at least only as an option. I'm totally happy with holding Alt down if I want the behaviour you describe, and with being able to click-and-drag any other object even when I have one object already selected, without an extra click before that - I'm used to Alt...)

Regards,
 Maren

For the selection rectangle: the functionality already exists, too. Try holding Shift down while you drag it. This will not select the object below, but open the 'lasso'.