Version: (using KDE 4.3.3) OS: Linux Installed from: openSUSE RPMs Currently by default the rectagle and text selection tools are combined with rectange being the default. The dropdown appears only after delay even if you click on the arrow making some users not even notice that text selection is possible; most users woud probably prefer text selection. Since there is enough space on the toolbar, in my opinion there is no point at all in combining them by default besides copying Adobe.
An alternative would be to make the behaviour of the selection tools icon more discoverable, as per the suggestion in bug 194805 comment 3
I don't think there is enough room (as in screen real estate, but also when looking from a usability perspective, i.e. keeping the number of buttons to choose from low) to have two separate buttons. Note that you can always configure the toolbar to show both buttons, if you wish so. We should rather fix the root cause, i.e. this: > most users would probably prefer text selection This is tracked in Bug 155563. > The dropdown appears only after delay This was fine in KDE3 (you could move the mouse down do get the menu immediately), nobody brought this back so far, though. However, you could also just use the Tools menu to get immediately to the tool in question.