Guy Harris wrote:
On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 09:47:41PM -0400, Nathan Jennings wrote:
Yeah, I thought about that too... the OS may provide a description. But,
like you mentioned, sometimes you may have two or more of the same
type/brand of NIC and that's not helpful.
Yes, that's the point - if the user has supplied their own name for an
interface, it probably has all the information they need, and the
OS-supplied description won't be useful, so there's not much use I can
see for supplying both of them, so I think just showing one name, and
having that name default to the OS-supplied name if present, and letting
the user replace that name, would be the right thing to do.
Yeah, OK. I think this would be a nice feature too. How much complexity
do you think this would introduce given the number of OSes Ethereal runs
on? Wouldn't the code to pull the descriptions be different for each OS?
Possibly even different between releases (e.g. 1.0 -> 2.0 -> 3.0, etc.)?
Or maybe there's enough similarity with certain Unix releases where some
code could be shared (*BSDs)?
I'm trying to get an idea on how to start work on this (e.g. start new
source file(s), header(s), etc.). If the complexity is high enough where
it's a negative factor (well, at least for me anyway), do you think the
feature and its subsequent implementation warrants the time and effort?
Any help or suggestions regarding this is more than welcome.
I also think the UI for letting the user specify the names shouldn't
involve having them construct a single string with all the names and
descriptions, it should let the user select an interface and give it a
name - for example, have the "Capture" preferences page look like:
Inteface: [fxp0 ][v]
Capture packets in promiscuous mode: []
Update list of packets in real time: []
Automatic scrolling in live capture: []
Interface fxp0 description: [ ]
Interface lo0 description: [ ]
I like this, however... how would GTK handle the text entry fields if
there were too many interfaces on the machine to fit in the dialog? Is
the dialog size dynamic? I'm a GTK newbie. :o(
I suppose I err'd on the side of simplicity when I worked on this. I
thought a description string was simple but still effective and
ultimately very usable. Given that we have six interfaces on one of our
machines, I can see where in some installations the capture dialog (GUI)
might become too cluttered. For instance, if other capture features
are added in the future, should the dialog scroll?
-Nathan
