Comment 1 for bug 311828

You can change the way the bounding box is calculated in the preferences:
'File > Inkscape Preferences > Tools': toggle 'Bounding box to use' to 'Geometric bounding box'

In Inkscape 0.46+devel r22062 the width shown in the select tool controls bar correctly reflects the selected method to calculate the bounding box (Inkscape 0.46 seems to always show the value of the visual bbox width in the controls bar).

- Visual Bbox: width includes stroke
- Geometric Bbox: width excludes stroke i.e. x-, y-distance between the outermost nodes in the selection

Proposing to close this report as fixed, though I don't know when this change was committed.