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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Opinions on solving bug #1375: Capture Options with many IP

From: Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:05:41 +0100
Stephen Fisher wrote:
I need some people's opinions on how we should solve bug #1375: "Capture Options with many IP addresses scrolls off screen" because I can't decide the best way to do it. The problem is that the IP address: field in the capture dialog makes the window as wide as the screen and scrolls off the edge of the widget if there are many IP addresses on the selected interface.

So far in my local code base, I've introduced the ... at the end of the label in GTK 2.6 and up and inserted an event box in between the hbox for the IP address list and the IP address label so it now cuts it off with the natural width of the window with ... or just cuts off before the edge of the widget. The event box keeps it looking clean and fitting within the hbox, and it even allows me to add tooltips when you point to the label. However, with a lot of IP addresses the tooltip is apparently too long and only flashes on the screen for a moment before disappearing :). With a hand full of addresses, it works nicely.

Should we list all of the IP addresses in some way - perhaps with another button to pop-up a list? That seems like we're overdoing it, but the user is saying that they usually want to look through the IPs at the beginning or the end and I suspect that others would want to look at any IP in the list. Or should we just keep it with the ... at the end and fitting nicely into the capture dialog (requires the event box). Any other ideas?
The best IMHO would be to show only something like you've described - cut after a specific amount of chars and append "...", the rest of the IP addresses should be displayed by the tooltip.

BTW: with IPv6 addresses, the described problem will be even more problematic.

Would it be possible to add a CR and/or NL to the tooltip text, so the problem you've described with the tooltip too big doesn't happen?

Regards, ULFL