Hi,
In Inkscape previous to version 0.46 I seem to remember that it was possible to select objects that where transparent but I cannot seem to be able to do this anymore.
Example : draw a rectangle, fill it with any color : you can select the rectangle by clicking anywhere within it's boundaries, make that color transparent and now the rectangle behaves as if it was not filled, i.e. by clicking within it you cannot select it.
I am pretty sure that in 0.45 this was not the case and any object that was filled, regardless of it's transparency, was easily selectable.
Is this a bug ? if not, is there a way round this change in behavior ?
I know that I can block out a zone around the object, this will select it, but will also select any object that is on to or behind the object ant I then have to ctrl+click all the objects I do NOT want to select. This is a painful maneuver...

Samuel.

As far as I know, here are your options:

1. Tab - Use the Tab key to cycle through objects until you select the right one. A big pain.
2. XML editor - If you select the desired object in the XML Editor, it will also select it on the canvas. Not too bad if you know which object it is in the list. Can be a pain, though.
3. Find - Before making the object transparent, right click it and choose Object Properties. Set the ID to something unique that you'll remember. Then you can go to the Edit menu, choose Find and search for the object ID. The object will be selected.
4. Selection box - The method you described. It will select objects that are also enclosed in the selection box. However, you can then use Tab and/or Shift-Tab to pretty easily select the right object, since cycling will start from the current selection.

I don't know of any way in previous versions to directly select a transparent object. It would be nice if you could directly select a transparent object in Outline Mode, since they still show up in that mode, but apparently you can't there either. For what it's worth, I think the last option above is probably the easiest.