Change Attributes in TC11.50 is weird

[RedTiF]

Hello,
can someone confirm that the Change Attributes window is doing weird things. It behave also differently if a single file is marked and more than one are marked. The window shows only 2 options, Gray and Check marked, while the Help file shows 3!
For example: take 1 file with archive bit and try to set it off, see the possibilitis. Now try 2 files.

Did I misunderstood the handling?

Rgds RedTiF

[Dalai]

This dialog uses tri-state checkboxes for the attributes. Checked means "Set this attribute" and Unchecked means "Remove this attribute". And Gray (or filled) means "Leave the attribute unchanged", meaning that files which have this attribute will continue to do so, and files which don't have this attribute will also continue to do so after confirming the attribute change.

TC 11.50 has no changes to this function compared to previous versions, as far as I'm aware.

[white]

It behave also differently if a single file is marked and more than one are marked.

That's normal. If 1 file is selected, the file attributes are loaded and shown in the dialog. The attributes can be set or unset, so the checkboxes have 2 states: Checked and Unchecked.

If more files or a folder are selected, this is not the case. File attributes are not loaded and the checkboxes are tri-state checkboxes and initially have the so called grey state to leave the attributes unchanged. However, on current windows versions this state does not look grey.

The window shows only 2 options, Gray and Check marked, while the Help file shows 3!

It is true that the text in the dialog: "(gray = unchanged, checked = set attributes)", clarifies only 2 of the 3 possible states.

[Dalai]

Maybe the help page could be expanded by a note saying that the gray (or filled) state is only visible and available after selecting multiple objects.

[RedTiF]

Thanks Dalai and white for the explanation. I seldom used this function and was puzzled with the checkboxes. Gray doesn't mean an empty checkbox, its stand for the checkbox with the minus sign.

[ghisler(Author)]

It's very unfortunate that Windows 11 uses a minus sign for "unchanged", it gives more the impression of "remove" than "do not change".

[white]

It's very unfortunate that Windows 11 uses a minus sign for "unchanged", it gives more the impression of "remove" than "do not change".

It is indeed quite confusing. They made the poor choice to use the dash sign for the representation, which people understandably confuse with the minus sign. There's a nice post on Reddit showing what the checkbox state looks like in various Windows versions.

[petermad]

Moderator message from: petermad » 2025-01-13, 16:08 UTC

Since there is no bug here, this is moved to "Total Commander (English)" from "TC11.x bug reports (English)"

[beb]

There's a nice post on Reddit showing what the checkbox state looks like in various Windows versions.

Thanks for the link. Someone wasn't too lazy to gather those evolutionary design changes together.
By the way, a nice note from there:

2023-11-06 u/mrleblanc101
The Windows 11 design is actually how intermediate checkboxes have been depicted on the Web and every other OS since forever.
Sometimes they use a "~" instead of a "-"

So, it turns out, Windows 11 just normalized things in that regard.

[ghisler(Author)]

Using "~" instead of "-" would be much better. A minus sign has the association of removing something, not letting it unchanged.