Icon Preview "Selection" mode only uses last selected object's bounding box

reproduced with Inkscape 0.47 and Inkscape 0.47+devel r9490 on OS X 10.5.8

Somewhat related: with the new 'auto-refresh' feature added in r9390 (bug #171918) it would be useful to have the option to lock the preview to a certain selection while still live-updating any changes the user makes (essential when working with icon files that contain more than one icon).

r9644 added a preference to "to keep last selected item shown."
 <http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/revision/9644>

r9647 made the icon preview selection sticky by default.
<http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/revision/9647>

Does the (default) sticky selection address your issue?

See also:
<http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.48#Icon_Dialog>

The selectionHold preference does not address the issue. The issue is that when selectionOnly is turned on (the "selection" checkbox is checked), the bounding box for the last selected object is used, rather than that of the entire selection.

Sample steps to reproduce:
1. create several partially-overlapping or non-overlapping shapes.
2. Select them all and tick "selection" in Icon Preview.
Expected behaviour: icon preview shows all shapes.
Actual behaviour: only the bounding box of the last selected shape (the furthest back with Ctrl+A/Select All) is previewed.

Thank you for the clarification.

Marking as feature request to extend the 'selection' (aka "currently selected item", as described in the release notes) to a selection set (a selection of multiple items).

This seems to be a long standing issue with the icon preview dialog:
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel/8682>
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel/11736/focus=11738>

Bug #170891 (filed at that time) implemented a toggle for 'Selection', but still uses a single item of the "current selection" for the bbox of the preview.

OTOH, using a "virtual object" (selection set) for the preview will change the pixel alignment of the objects within "arbitrarily" (i.e. relative to the origin of the visual bbox of the current selection), whereas a single item (e.g. a rectangle stacked below, also used e.g. for export/slicing) can ensure that the pixel-aligned objects (with regard to a preview/icon size) will be rendered in the preview as intended.

Seven years later and this is still an issue.

Windows 10, Inkscape 0.92.2