Comment 8 for bug 1827242

No matter how hard I try to learn, again and again I bump to this problem. I haven't analyzed it very deeply but I think it happens after I first have done something to the selected items and and KiCad has left them selected after the action. My brains kind of tell me I have finished what I was doing and now I'm starting afresh. I move the mouse and try to delete something but the previously selected items are deleted.

At least one situation when this happens is when I move a footprint and then try to delete old segments around it.

It's difficult to say how to make this better without adding some complexity or making it less logical in some respect. It's like Michael said, "I think the current priority is correct" even though it doesn't work for me in some situations.

What could be done is to identify the exact situations where this is a problem and only after that think about a focused solution. For example: if something was done to the selected item(s) and after that Delete clicked on top of something else, show a tooltip-like warning (like when you select reference point for a copy) "Press Delete again to delete selection or Esc to cancel". That would leave most of the workflows unaffected but would prevent accidental deletion when it's most likely to happen.

If I select something and then click Delete I most likely actually want to delete the selection. But if I do something else to the selection first and then click Delete I most likely didn't want to delete the selection. Why would I first do something else to it and then suddenly change my mind, wanting to delete it? It can happen but much less likely.