Huge thanks to our Platinum Members Endace and LiveAction,
and our Silver Member Veeam, for supporting the Wireshark Foundation and project.

Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Open dialog file type is broken

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:57:59 -0800
> On Nov 23, 2015, at 2:59 AM, Michal Labedzki <michal.labedzki@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> It seems that idea of opening file by type is broken from:
> -----------------------
> commit bf4e84aba6ff98227f76549ff2a82d65115a990c
> Author:     Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> AuthorDate: Fri Nov 8 01:08:42 2013 +0000
> Commit:     Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> CommitDate: Fri Nov 8 01:08:42 2013 +0000
> 
>    For open dialogs, offer a list of sets of extensions, not of file types;
>    .cap, for example, doesn't refer to a particular file type - a whole
>    bunch of file types use .cap.
> 
>    Also offer, in addition to "All Files", "All Capture Files", which
>    matches all the extensions we know about.
> 
>    svn path=/trunk/; revision=53156
> -----------------------
> 
> I do not see Android Logcat (and many, many more!) in list of types in
> Open dialog.

The Open dialog has:

	1) a list of file types to filter for in the dialog, labeled "Files of type:"

	2) a combo box for "what file type to *treat* this file as", defaulting to "Automatic", with an option to override it.

List 1) does not include Android Logcat text or binary, as there's no extension specified for binary files - is there a standard extension for them? - and as text files would be ".txt", and if you filter for ".txt" files there's a very good chance that most of the files you see *won't* be Logcat text files.

List 2) includes both Android Logcat binary and text files.

The two lists serve different purposes:

	list 1) is to let the user select which files to show in the open dialog;

	list 2) is to let the user override the file type that Wireshark would, by default, use for the selected file;

so the two lists are constructed differently.

> There is only list of file types with extension. But "a
> whole bunch of file types use .cap", but currently user cannot open
> Logcat file if heuristic fail.

1) On what files does the heuristic fail?  Perhaps either the Logcat heuristics need to be made more accepting, or some *other* heuristics need to be tightened.

2) The user cannot choose "Android Logcat Binary" or "Android Logcat Text" from list 2)?

> By the way: When I add this combobox with file types I do not think
> about use it as "File Extension Type", so it is not standard part of
> open dialogue, it is Wireshark feature.

Presumably by "add this combobox with file types" you're referring to the list 2) combobox, not the list 1) combobox.  The list 1) combobox is a standard part of open file dialogs (or, at least, non-OS X open file dialogs), and behaves as it should.  The list 2) combobox isn't showing a list of file extensions, it's showing a list of file types.

BTW, that list should probably be sorted differently, with the items with only heuristics sorted *before* the items with magic numbers, because you'll rarely need to override Wireshark's choice for files with magic numbers, and with both groups sorted alphabetically, to put the types most likely to be used at the top and to make it easier to find the types within the two groups.

> But removing extension from
> all types is also good for me.