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Old 06-13-2021, 03:00 AM
Spliff Spliff is offline
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Join Date: 04-07-2021
Posts: 192
Attributes problems

I don't understand Attributes handling and especially how to determine which attributes are displayed in the "Item Attributes" pane. (Help file for "Attributes" is 153 results, and I'm going around in circles.)

I understand any settings I make, when some item is selected, just apply to that item and its child items, so I first select the "Text" item within the "Templates" sub-folder in the tree; I hope that changes I make then, will apply to ALL "Text" items, but I'm not sure; perhaps, they will only apply to NEW "Text" items, and in order to make those changes to "all", I will first make a "search" for all ("Text") items, then select all (current) items, then make the changes for the "Attributes" pane?

I can't even try, since I'm unable to make ANY change to what is displayed in the "Item Attributes" pane.

Also, I would like to know, given a certain display selection only, in the "Item Attributes" pane, if there is a way to display/see the complete list for the attributes of a given item? Since in everyday use, you probably just want to have displayed a tiny selection of attributes, in an "Item Attributes" list always visible, but in special cases, you need to know about specific other attributes, not currently displayed in the user's specific "default" settings.

So how to change which attributes are displayed in the "Item Attributes" pane? (Here again, at some time, I had been able to make changes there, and now no way.)

NO relevant command to be found (I tried all these for single "Text" items in the tree, and for the "Text" item "Template", i.e. that item being selected):

- in the context menu of the item in the tree

- in the Edit / Tab / Item (!) / Tree (or any other) menus

- (The "Tools - Attributes" (menu) dialogue has checkboxes, as is obviously also for the creation of "User attributes", but the checkboxes, for system attributes, have no incidence on the display in the "Item Attributes" pane, those cannot be de-selected here anyway.)

- (In this context, I used the registry tools of yours in order to do away with group functionality, but some unneeded functionality seems to remain though, e.g. the system attribute "Access Count" cannot be de-selected but obviously triggers unnecessary writes for users who will never use this attribute for any means; ditto for "Date Accessed"; "Date Created" may be helpful indeed, and also "Date Modified", and especially, there is "real" writing done on those occasions, so some additional writing doesn't harm, but with "Date Accessed", there would NOT be any "real" writing involved, considering that values like "last-viewed item", etc. are obviously not written into the specific records, but into system variables/arrays.)

- in the context menu of the "Item Attributes" pane even when I click beneath the currently-displayed attributes list in there (most commands (incl. "Properties") just apply to the currently-selected attribute - one of them is always selected, clicking beneath the list does NOT de-select them -, except for toggle "Categorized / Alphabetic", and there is "Delete" and "Insert" indeed, but the "Insert" command just brings a list with quite "exotic" attributes, whilst all of the "regular" system attributes are absent from that list - I currently just have displayed "Flag" and "Icon" for my "work" items (I said that I had once be able to work on the list to be displayed, but now no access to any change function anymore), whilst the listed "Item Attributes" for the "Template - Text" are "Flag, Form, Icon, Primary Attribute, Template Name, Title Expression".

So I'm really stuck here.

(As for my first question, an ad hoc "full attributes list" for a given item, without having to make the necessary change(s) for the regular display in the "Item Attributes" pane, then "back to regular" again: if that's not available currently, it would obviously be a great enhancement, both for the "Item", as for any item's context menu! And ideally as a dialogue, allowing for changes to be made in case, instead of just a message box with a non-editable list.)


(EDIT: The displayed attributes for the "Related Items" pane are available by "View - Choose Columns", but that's obviously not the solution here.)

Last edited by Spliff; 06-13-2021 at 03:14 AM.
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