Empty Flowed-text objects are not selectable

[Andreas Müller]

Text flow objects are created by draging a rectangle with the text tool. Such rectangles have to be converted to text before a drawing can be exported to PDF, or they will show up as opaque rectangles. However, if the text flow rectangle does not contain any text, then it is impossible to select it except in the XML editor. The Select All method does not select them, and one cannot select them by clicking on them, because only visible things can be selected that way. But although they are invisible, they do affect the drawing.

It should be possible to select these rectangles when clicking anywhere inside it, even outside the bounding box of the text contained within them.

This is the tip of the iceberg of more general problem with inkscape's selection logic: If I convert a text flow area to text (Text -> Convert to Text), it becomes very confusing how to select the object. For the text area, it is quite simple: click within the bounding box of the text, and it will be selected (which is the reason why you cannot select a text object that has a collapsed bounding box). After the conversion, it's completely different. Clicking in some locations selects the object, in others it doesn't.

Inkscape 0.48 on openSuSE 12.3

[su_v (suv-lp)]

AFAICT a duplicate of
- Bug #485269 “Invisible and unselectable flow region in image”
  <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/485269>

Note that not just "empty" flowed regions are effected (no text content at all), see related
- Bug #349602 “Textbox is unselectable after text is overflowed by empty lines.”
  <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/349602>