Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Preferences?

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Is there a reason that many of the ethereal gui preferences ( and the 
> resolver preferences ) are being handled in a rather hard coded way 
> and not being dealt with through the normal preference module mechanism
> like the preferences for dissectors?  

Well, for one thing, the normal preference module mechanism has no way
of specifying preferences such as the "Font" and "Colors" items in
the "User Interface" preference page, or specifying an item such as the
"Columns" item or the "TCP Streams" item.  The preference module
mechanism would have to be extended significantly in order to be able to
preserve the UI of those widgets.

There's also the issue of what to do if they change - if they change,
there's no point in rescanning the packet list, but *other* things need
to be redrawn if, say, the font is changed.