Comment 4 for bug 1803362

Well, if it was intended, that's very unfortunate. "Thin" doesn't strike me as an engineering term. It certainly look very thin on the screen. However it creates a "dead zone" around its border, in which only that zone (and other zones can be selected). If we try to quantify that "zone" with numbers rather than adjectives, the width of that zone comes to be around 0.020", which doesn't seem like a lot until you try to work at higher zoom levels in a busy design with multiple intersecting zones and keep out areas. Then you can't really select anything, even if you ALT key was working, adding additional actions to every mouse click you make, doesn't seem like a good solution.

The analogy with selecting the pads in footprints, text in footprints etc. is not really a correct one. Footprints, texts etc. have clearly visible borders and no invisible zone around them. While I personally would prefer selecting those with an extra key (like holding ALT, because honestly how often do you really have to select a pad in a footprint), I know better by now not to click on the pad when selecting a footprint. It is subconscious by now and I don't have to think about it. Zones are not really visible and extend their influence far beyond their borders (far=0.020 :)

What I fail to understand is what benefit such logic gives? Was there a lot of complaints that people didn't like disambiguation menu when they were trying to select a zone? What do they do with the rest of the design processes?

I created a short video illustrating an attempt to select a footprint or a pad when there are two zones near the footprint and a keepout around it as well. At the very end of the clip you can see my attempts to use ALT key to force the menu.