Attributes problems

[Spliff]

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.)

[PureMoxie]

Have you looked at Tools -> Options -> Attributes tab? There you can hide any of the system attributes you don't want to see.

When you add an attribute to a template item, that attribute does show for all items based on that template, not just new ones.

If I understand what you are saying, I think the best way to show a subset of attributes for multiple items at once is with a search item; each search item can show different attributes in the search results pane.

[Spliff]

Spot on, PureMoxie, thank you so much!!!

Tools - Options - Attributes I had overlooked indeed, and that's the settings dialogue I need, so this is not Template-specific, and your kind hint obviously is the solution to my main Attributes problem.

(Help system: 153 results for "attributes", I had looked into some 20 of them - many don't seem to be relevant, from their respective titles -, result 1 = "Attribute", result 2 = "Item Attributes Pane", and over there a link to "Attribute Options" (which is result number 6), then "Custom Item Titles (result 3), Core Attributes and System Attributes (results 4 and 5, respectively) - NO hint to the "Tool - Options - Attribute" dialogue in either of those... and on my day one with UR I obviously had found those settings, within the "Options", by accident...)


"When you add an attribute to a template item, that attribute does show for all items based on that template, not just new ones." - How would I do that, since the "Options" above are generic, NOT Template-, or item-specific?


"I think the best way to show a subset of attributes for multiple items at once is with a search item" - No, that would not be a viable / realistic (if technically possible, indeed!) solution, the screen would become unreadable with ALL of them - since what I was asking for / or then, rather, suggesting, is:

A dialogue displaying ALL (system; and thus not a subset of) attributes, with the respective values, for a given item (by tree context menu and/or Item menu command), in order to ad hoc OVERRIDE the Item Attributes list (which cannot be sorted manually (just abc or by category) in my case is very restrained, in order for the Item Attributes pane being so tiny that the generically important-for-me items are always visible and editable, and without taking too much screen real estate by always being visible).

I'm a little bit surprised - but here again, I may be mistaken - that currently, there does not seem to exist any such dialogue, let alone an editable one, for all of some item's attributes, upon request, since this functional lack almost forces the user to display, all the time, ANY system attribute in the "Item Attributes" pane, just in case of, and which makes that pane very big on the screen.

On the other hand, for the "Icon" attribute, e.g., there are no shortcuts (i.e. cannot be assigned currently, not even for the frequently-used ones), so I do need to have the entry "Icon" readily available within that pane, but if that pane shows them all, it gets very large, and the "Icon" entry will be hidden; if you just need some 3, 4, 5 attributes within that pane, you can de-select all others, and the pane will become very tiny... but then, you will need a way for easy (and ideally even editing) access to any of the other attributes in special cases. Hence my suggestion.


This being said, thank you very much, PureMoxie!