Bug 89518 - FEATURE REQUEST: Free Hand Select tool in LibreOffice Draw
Summary: FEATURE REQUEST: Free Hand Select tool in LibreOffice Draw
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Draw (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) All
: low enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Object-Selection-Alignment
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2015-02-21 02:59 UTC by Gabriel Diosan
Modified: 2019-02-25 12:02 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Free Hand Selection in GIMP (316.87 KB, image/png)
2015-02-21 02:59 UTC, Gabriel Diosan
Details

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Description Gabriel Diosan 2015-02-21 02:59:28 UTC
Created attachment 113567 [details]
Free Hand Selection in GIMP

FEATURE REQUEST: Free Hand Select tool in LibreOffice Draw

It would be very handy to have a free hand select tool within LibreOffice Draw to select numerous objects. This could work by either drawing around objects in a similar way how it is done in GIMP (free hand/flowing) or could involve drawing a number of points around objects and simply closing the selection. 

Using the 'Escape' key should exit from the selection.

I have attached an image from GIMP showing the Free Hand Select tool.

Tested on:

LibreOffice
Version: 4.5.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: 52b25c1adf3a70819aea2080b0ad50a14a3c104b
TinderBox: Linux-rpm_deb-x86_64@46-TDF, Branch:master, Time: 2015-02-17_03:10:47
Locale: en_AU
Comment 1 Regina Henschel 2015-02-21 19:00:23 UTC
I do not understand the request. To catch several objects you can drag a selection rectangle or you can shift-click to add further objects to a selection. The Gimp works on raster graphics, Draw on vector graphics, so they cannot be compared directly. Please provide a more detailed description of the wanted tool.
Comment 2 Gabriel Diosan 2015-02-22 05:19:41 UTC
Hi Regina

You are right, you can use a selection rectangle or use the shift key to select multiple objects. Most of the time this is fine, however I have worked with some drawings which have many objects. If you use the selection rectangle you may end up selecting the objects you want to select as well as many that you don't want, requiring you to use the shift key to deselect many. Whilst this works, it is a bit cumbersome.

My thought was that it would be good to be able to have something like a "Selection Polygon" where you could select numerous objects simply by drawing a few lines around them and closing the selection polygon. In hindsight free hand select was probably not the best way to describe what I was getting at.
Comment 3 Robinson Tryon (qubit) 2015-02-26 20:52:10 UTC
(In reply to Gabriel Diosan from comment #2)
> My thought was that it would be good to be able to have something like a
> "Selection Polygon" where you could select numerous objects simply by
> drawing a few lines around them and closing the selection polygon.

Seems plausible. Marking to 'NEW' for now. Bumping down priority slightly, as this functionality seems to be an improvement/extension of existing methods.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2016-06-12 08:59:10 UTC
The feature request to improve the object selection is valid and would be a valueable upgrade. However, the proposed freehand/polygon selection is not really the Libreoffice style. We should rather make the objects easily accessible in the Navigator. 

Adding this to the layers meta ticket because of the relationship to https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56498 (Layer management).
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2019-02-25 12:02:24 UTC
No further input so closing this as WF. The multiselection works per shift+click and the envisioned alternative is by pimping up the Navigator.