Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Wish list item 22 - compare packets

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday, August 28, 2003, at 6:43 PM, Jason Copenhaver wrote:

> This is only the begining, right now it allows you to mark a couple of
> packets for compare

Unfortunately:

	1) it makes the old control-M to mark a packet no longer work;

	2) you can't tell from the display whether a packet is marked with 
"Mark Frame" or marked as a compare window.

I'd suggest, instead, just having a "Display marked packets in new 
window" option, and not add a new type of marking.  If you *must* add a 
new type of marking, then

	1) don't use control-M, use something not already in use;

	2) arrange that frames marked for comparison be visually different 
(ideally, visually different even to the non-color-blind) from frames 
marked with "Mark Frame".

Also, if *no* frames are marked for comparison, either

	1) the "show compare packet in new window" (which should really be 
"compare packets", plural) menu item should be grayed-out and inactive

or

	2) it should tell you that no packets have been selected for 
comparison in a more user-friendly way than printing "argghh..!!" 
printed and aborting with a null pointer dereference.