Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Add PDML output to ethereal

["Guy Harris" <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gilbert Ramirez said:
> However, I wonder if that's not the best UI decision... do users expect
> PDML  output to be selected from "File | Save As" ?

At least from the language used in some questions asked in ethereal-users,
if I remember correctly, at least some users seem to think of "print to
file" as being a form of "saving" the file - I think they ask how to save
the capture as text.

Now, perhaps what they *really* mean is that they want to save the raw
data from the packets in a hex dump file, but I suspect not.

> Of course, they
> serve different  purposes... saving as a different file format saves
> just the packet data, not  the dissection, whereas the printing function
> prints the packet dissection.

Perhaps both "print to file" and "save as PDML" should them be under File
-> Save Dissection As?

(Note that in at least some GUIs, "print to file" means to generate
printer output to a file, not generating plain text to a file, e.g.:

    "Save as PDF" in Mac OS X does what the name indicates;

    "print to file" on Windows appears to, in most applications, generate
a "printer file" (either in some Windows intermediate file format or
in the format that would eventually be handed to the printer, I forget
which);

    I think KDEprint might do the same (the file extension in the KDE
print dialog screenshot at

        http://printing.kde.org/screenshots/pics/printdialog.png

    suggests that might be the case, i.e. the grayed-out "output file"
section has the output file as a ".ps" PostScript file).)