GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 87856
Some object menu items should be selectable for groups
Last modified: 2019-03-20 11:00:20 UTC
Currently, object menu items are only active when single (non-grouped) objects are selected. Some menu items do make sense to apply for multiple objects, e.g. on FS flows, the flow type can be set from the menu. It would be very practical to be able to set such on a number of items at the same time. Problem 1: Which menu items make sense? Solution: Change the activate field in DiaMenu to be flags, with ACTIVATE and GROUPABLE flags. Problem 2: What if there are different kinds of objects selected? Solution 1: Only activate when all selected objects are the same type. Solution 2 (complex): Tie in the properties system to allow the same kind of property to be set. May require a property flag, has a problem of how do you know which object has which property.
Select an object and right-click it, you get a menu where you can choose "Properties". Select two objects simultaneously and right-click one, you don't get a menu and instead must use the drop-down menu to access the properties of the selected two objects. If I've understood this bug correctly, this behaviour is part of the same problem. Surely whatever logic the drop-down menu uses to test whether "Properties" is available for selected items can be used to tell whether right-clicking on a selection should offer a "Properties" choice? Let me know if I've misunderstood and I'll open as a separate issue.
You've described the problem well. The simplest logic of grouped selection properties behavior would be to show only common properties for selected objects, if object are from various types. On the other side, if objects are the same, all properties should be shown. Any change should apply to all objects. When the property window is shown, only values of properties with the same value for all objects should be shown. Other may be empty, while usually checkboxes are shown with kind of gray V that indicates that there are checked and unchecked values for this property selected objects
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