I'd like to know if Inkscpae can help me select nodes in a complex traced object in a non-rectangular bounding box.

I need to select a mass of nodes that follow a crease or contour in the object I am tracing. This contour, crossing hundreds of autotraced blobs many objects deep, needs to be rotated and straightened relative to others. To achieve this with the usual draggable bounding box selector I would have to make hundreds of small adjacent rectangular selections, inevitably selecting some nodes that I did not want to select.

Instead I want to define an irregular area more like the relaxed shape of a very long rubber band, then tell Inkscape to select all nodes underneath that area in the autotraced object.

There a several methods to select nodes:

When you want to explicit select every node from one single continuous stroke, combined, grouped whatever: select one node and hit either cmd+A or go Edit->Select All

Or you can in/decrease the amount left+right from hovering upon 1 node with ctrl+scrollwheel-up/down.

Or scrollwheel upon a node with several selected strokes like flood-selecting (node distance related)

Hope this helps.

If I understand what you are doing - you basically need a lasso select. ?

I use 93 and I am pretty sure it does not have that command.  [ never found it ]

I have found that the best solution is often to go to the ends of the paths relevant to what I am doing.  For example, if I have a large spaghetti line with, say, 100 nodes on it in a squiggly vertical orientation - and then it curls at the bottom and goes horizontal for a bit and then back to vertical.  Let's say I only want to work with a portion of the long vertical, the curve and half the horizontal.  I zoom into the line segment between the last node I want to work with and the first irrelevant node on each end of the over all line.  I select that segment.  I delete that segment with the node tool edit options.  Then, I break the path and delete everything not relevant.  Of course, I am doing this work after having duplicated the layer with original line work as a back up.  Do this process for each of your spaghetti lines,  In the end, you will have your target.  It is slower than a lasso tool, though.

I think the 1+ versions of Inkscape offers the ability to create a shape behind your lines - or node clouds - and automatically cut everything outside the shape off your spaghetti.  I can't offer the name of the function as I use 93.  [ waiting for 1+ to be able to open pre 1+ files ]

@NELCHAI - Thanks for reminding me of the name of this function, lasso select is exactly what I mean. @Polygon - Unfortunately I need to select certain 'clumps' of nodes on multiple, complex traced objects. The clumps are linear in a sense - in aggregate they follow a gently sloping contour that is plain to the observer, but the bounding box select is a very inefficient means to select them. Scroll-selecting nodes on a multiple-object selection sounds worth a try.