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Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Added a "No dissections" option to the printingdialog

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From: Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 07:31:43 +0200
Olivier Biot wrote:

From: Ulf Lamping

| As the name implies, this option will suppress any dissection from
the
| output.
|
| This can be very handy, when trying to export a raw packet hexdump.

That's correct. However there's a small issue in the dialog. By
default the "Packet details" checkbox is checked and the "dissections
as displayed" radio button is selected. If I uncheck the "Packet
details" checkbox and then click on the only active radio button left
("No dissections"), I cannot revert by having this radio button
unselected... unless I first check again the "Packet details" checkbox
and then choose another option for the radiobutton group.

Well, I was a bit tired yesterday. We might not call that an issue, but simply a bug ;-)
I've checked in a fix for this.

Maybe we need to find other wordings for the "Packet details" and "No
dissections" as I find the usage of the former rather cumbersome. Or
should we rewrite that "Packet Format" widget so it is closer to what
will be output to a printer/file? We can choose between the following
"objects":
a. packet summary line
b. packet dissection (the protocol tree)
   b1. all collapsed
   b2. as displayed
   b3. all expanded
c. hex dump

I would use check boxes for a, b and c, and a radio button group for
(b1, b2, b3) which would be active if and only if check box b is
ticked. I see that it can make sense to enable a, b and c
independently. We can also make the "Print" button sensitive to the
condition "a selected || b selected || c selected" as pronting a blank
sheet of paper does not make sense to me :)

What's the opinion of the list on this?
Hmmm, sometimes I'm just too blind to see ;-)
I thought all the time that someone wants to print the summary line *or* print the details. But that might not be true, maybe someone simply wants both (and there's no reason to deny it :-).

So the frame could look like (reflecting the naming scheme from other parts of the GUI):

--- Packet Format -------------------------------------
[  ] Packet summary line
[x] Packet details
  (  ) All collapsed
  (x) As displayed
  (  ) All expanded
[  ] Packet bytes
---------------------------------------------------------

with the behaviour you've outlined above and the defaults as shown.

This changes shouldn't be too hard to achieve, I might make them later today...

Regards, ULFL