Hi gang. I was wondering if there's a setting somewhere to prevent the following behaviour:

I have some shapes, clipped with a rectable, like the following example. The circles are grouped, and then the group is clipped with the rectangle:



What's happening is that if I Ctrl-click where the big circle would have been located (outside the clipped rect), even if clipped and invisible, it gets selected as well.




My real life drawing is more complex that his, this is just and example, and it gets a little annoying because when I try to select an element of one group with Ctrl-click, I end up selecting the invisible element of another group. Granted, this is entirely my faulty process of drawing a comic, where I draw a big scene and clip it to a rectangle "and presto"... not really.

So, the question: is there a way to make Inkscape ignore clipped out parts of objects so they don't get selected?

Not that I know of. You could use layers that you can lock, or the Alt key + multiple clicks, or Alt + mousewheel, for selecting the correct object.

Try Ctrl-Alt-Click twice?

You can just lock that object if it keeps getting in the way, object attributes/ lock. You won't be able to select it anymore though without either unlocking everything or using the xml
Of no particular use to you in this instance is the fact that if you switch to visual bounding box the clipped group's selection box follows the clipped area and not the invisible area, so you might be able to improve your workflow somehow that way

^^ ... or the Objects dialog can selectively unlock.

Cool ideas people. Thanks for the answers.

It's a minor pet peeve, but I somehow would think it should be a standard thing. Don't select something invisible unless a modifier key is pressed along with the click.