Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Add expression dialog, proposal for some changes

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: "Olivier Biot" <ethereal@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 12:48:18 +0100
From: Ulf Lamping

| Hi List!
|
| I would like to change the "Add expression" dialog, as it needs some
| changes IMHO.

Great!

| The following things come to my mind:
|
| 1) the showing/hiding of controls dependant of the current settings
is
| usally a bad idea. Making them insensitive is enough and will make
the
| dialog much more intuitive.
| 2) move the range widget into the value column

Agreed (both).

| 3) replace the relation list by a set of radio buttons, insensitive
the
| ones not suitable for the current field type

Beware: some operators only operate on slices, so from the moment one
ft_can_slice() returns true those operators have to be available from
the moment that a (valid) slice has been entered.

| 4) add a column of operators ("(none)", "and", "or", "and not", ...)
to
| the left of the dialog

Agreed.

| 5) add a column of field type labels (Boolean, unsigned 2 bytes,
...),
| with only the field type corresponding to the field name sensitive
and
| all other insensitive

Beware: the field type and its length are not always fixed. For
example FT_BYTES and FT_STRING don't have a fixed length.

| 6) add a field at the bottom of the dialog, showing the resulting
filter
| string

Definitely! Maybe even a multi-line field.

One remark: should we provide length/size operators to the dfilter
language?

Regards,

Olivier