Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [ethereal-dev] DIsplay of flags in packet pane

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> That is a perfectly good point & makes you free to give less weight
> to my idea. My perspective is that I know the protocol (or I am prepared
> to learn it) and want a tool to give me the bits in a reasonable format. I am
> one of the 'they' in you paragraph.

But only one of them; not everybody is in that position.

In addition...

> Your perspective is that you understand and wish to explore networking,
> but you are not intimate with each and every protocol.

...even protocols with which one is familiar may have a boatload of
collections of one-bit Boolean bitfields - see, for example, SMB - and
it may well be that somebody who *is* familiar with the protocol may not
happen to know, off the top of their head, what all the bits mean in all
of those collections.

> > > Your second point is why I would make the textual description present
> > > but optional.
> >
> >"Optional" in what sense?
> 
> If the [+] is turned off, it cannot be seen.

I.e., put the single-character breakdown of the collection of bitfields
into an interior node, and always put the individual bitfields into the
leaf nodes, of the protocol tree.

Such a scheme would be fine with me; I don't think the notion of
displaying a collection of bitfields with the Boolean ones indicated
with single letters is wrong, I just don't think it should be the *sole*
way of displaying those particular bitfields.