Problems to remove? Re: [Bf-funboard] Active but unselected

[Luke Wenke]

This special state (unselected but active) currently affects blender in a
few different ways....
At least at the present moment, the user is given some indication that a
particular unselected object is special (it has a magenta centre rather than
a yellow centre).

Here are some affected hotkeys (there may be more)

tab or ctrl-tab, etc.
This will put the active object into editmode (or posemode), even if it is
unselected, and other objects are selected! (to do this, select an object or
an armature, then press "a" to unselect everything, then use "b" to select
other objects, but not the active object, then press tab... the active
object will go into editmode [rather than a selected object])

"a", "b"
(see last paragraph - they are used to create the unselected active object
in the first place) Maybe "b" is the main problem since it allows you to
select non-active objects while the active object remains unselected...

ctrl-t, ctrl-p, ctrl-c, etc
the active object will become the focus of the track, or the parent, or the
focus of the attribute copying, even if the active object isn't selected. At
the moment the user can distinguish the active object from the other
unselected objects by the magenta (non-yellow) centre...

=========================================
Suggested changes: (which would make "active non-selected" state irrelevant
for the user)

tab/ctrl-tab
If nothing is selected, it could have an error message "nothing selected" or
"no active object". If there is no selected active object then it could say
"no active object" rather than you editing the non-selected active object or
a random non-active selected object.

"b"
When you are selecting items, the first or last item being selected could
become active, if there are currently no active selected items.

"a" when you press it to select nothing, then press it again to select
everything, the active item would be selected... so when the active item
isn't selected, neither is anything else.

ctrl-t, ctrl-p, ctrl-c, etc.
There could be an error message if at least two objects aren't selected. And
if "b" hasn't been modified, there should be an error message displayed if
there isn't an active selected object. (since "b" currently allows you to
have unselected active objects while there being two or more selections)

----- Original Message ----- 
> Like you explained, there is an active but unselected state.
>
> The reason for this is that blender remembers the last active object. So
that
> it can reasign active state on selection of all objects. And knows
something
> to do on TAB without anything selected.
>
> I see it as an internal "helper" state, something that shouldn't be shown
to
> the user directly. Because something like active but unselected is just
the
> right thing to confuse users. So please no indication of this special
state.