Select objects by type, e.g. select all text objects

Select by type is already possible in 'Edit > Find…'.

See also
<http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Select.html#Select-Find>

> These have to be available in a submenu in the Select menu (…)

I would agree that the functionality of the 'Find…' dialog is too deeply buried (the dialog can't be docked (bug #592323) nor remembers the last used settings (bug #480847, bug #456180)). Personally I think an enhanced, dockable 'Find…' dialog is easier and more versatile to use (and allows quicker access to the various options than a submenu).

> (…) and all have keyboard shortcuts

There are already too few keys available - instead of adding individual shortcuts for all those select modes it would need to be assured that all modes do have verbs which would allow to map them individually to keyboard shortcuts if required by the user. They could be accessed using the normal shortcuts for menu commands ('Alt' + underlined character in the text of the menu item).

> selecting parts of grouped objects (…)

Maybe better discussed in bug #172127 “Optionally forbid selections outside working group”?

> (…) I would suggest to set it *not* to select objects inside grouped objects.

Your proposed default depends on your personally preferred workflow, but possibly not for others. At the moment the 'Find…' dialog is the only command that allows to recursively select objects across groups and layers, which is very useful IMHO e.g. when mass-changing certain attributes of a sub-set of objects without needing to know in which layer/group they are). Also, you already can limit the scope of the search (current selection|layer, include hidden|locked).

Overall related earlier feature requests:
Bug #170378 “Select All by Stroke or Fill Color” (plus duplicates)
Bug #171685 “Smart Select”

Attached is a patch that can select objects by type.

The idea is you select one or more objects on canvas and then from the menu Edit->Select Same->Object Type (or keyboard shortcut) , all objects of the same type (rect, ellipse, star, spiral, path, text, image, clone, offset supported) are selected.

Including (or not) hidden and locked objects are taken from user preferences (Inkscape Preferences->Behavior->Selecting). Groups are included.

Patch tested on Windows XP, Inkscape 11562.
Works as expected except:
* Flowed text, not supported.
* Linked and dynamic offsets, not differentiated.

Regarding the user interface, the whole Select Same... menu would gain from being added to the context menu.

Nice that you are working on this. Can't wait to used it in the next release. Could you also come up with an keyboard shortcut for this that is based upon or derived from CTRL+A?

Committed to trunk as r11573
*Flowed text and Linked dynamic offsets should be working
* Select Same submenu added to the context menu
* Keyboard shortcut for Select Same->Object Type is "Shift+Alt+A"

@Pander, you may be able to download a "Development version" of Inkscape to try it out.
See http://inkscape.org/download/