Make selection independent of searches & results :)

[meteorquake]

Currently when you have items selected and you change a folder, it maintains the selection as much as it can, which was a change a little while back.
That continues to be very useful to me and hopefully for others too.
What I also find is that when I change the search box, I also want the selection maintained, but that doesn't currently happen.
Now I think this can be generalised to something subtly different, that there could be a mode where the selection per tab is completely independent of whether its items are currently visible or not. So for example you could search for France and select 3 items, then search for Germany and select 2 items (and so on) and the result would be 5 items in the selection, with the subpart of it present in the active results list highlighted in the results, but it won't have forgotten those off that list.
I would think for this concept it might be helpful to provide a toggle mode so you can switch it on and off, for example under Edit - Invert Selection there could be a toggle menu item "Persist Selection", and a shortcuttable command. I suspect anyone getting used to it would likely leave it switched on because we all start a new selection by clicking an item without modifier and that would naturally clear the selection whether on list or off. It actually seems to me that the idea of the selection only being what you see and clearing itself whenever you move or change the results may be more a habituated inheritance from how Explorer has done things because I'm unable to think of a scenario whereby one would ever want it to clear in that way beyond simply providing a continuity of habit, a selection (per tab) being unrelated to the current results being much more meaningful.
Cheers, David