11. Selection

MOLMOL uses the selection concept wherever possible. This means that the user first selects a set of items, and then executes the command that performs the desired action on the selected items.

There are two ways to make selections:

Interactive selection. Items (like atoms or bonds) can be selected by clicking on them with the left or middle mouse button. Doing that will normally deselect all other items of the same class. To prevent that, either the Shift or the Ctrl key must be pressed on the keyboard while making the selection. For text annotations there is a difference between the function of the left and middle mouse buttons: the left mouse button only selects texts if their bottom-left corner is the nearest item, while the middle mouse button gives priority to texts and selects them whenever the position is within the text.
Use commands. Items can be selected by using various commands. The most convenient way to use these commands is the selection dialog box, which can be swiched on with the DialSelect command. All these commands take expressions that specify whether an item is selected or not. See chapter "Expressions" on page 13 for a description of the expression syntax.

Unfortunatley there is no way to see what items are currently selected. But the status line will give feedback after a selection (interactively or by a command) is made.