> > While we are discussing confusing UI:
> > I find the display filter field on the main window misleading. When I
> > first tried Ethereal, I typed a filter into the textfield, and hit
> > enter. I expected the filter to be applied to the displayed data. After
> > some experimentation, I realized that the filter is only used when the
> > file is reloaded.
> >
> > I think there should be an "apply filter" button (either on the main
> > window or the filter window) that will reload the data with the filter
> > activated. Or, the filter should be applied when the user hits enter
> > in the display filter textfield.
> >
> > Comments?
>
> Sounds good.
>
> At some point I'll probably change the way the display filtering works,
> so that, instead of filtering by re-reading the capture file and reading
> only packets that match the filter, it just scans the packets we read in
> initially to see if they match the filter, and marks the ones that do to
> be displayed (assuming Gilbert doesn't beat me to it, given that the
> display filtering changes he's working on will probably work in the same
> fashion).
That day has come - Gilbert's changes made it fairly easy to do. A
display filter is now applied not by re-reading the file, but by
re-building the packet summary list from the list of all packets.
(Currently, if you read in a new packet file while a display filter is
in effect, the display filter is not cleared, so, while we read in all
the packets from the new file, we only display the ones that match the
display filter. Should we clear the display filter when we read in a
new file?)
> The change you suggest should fall out of that without too much effort.
It did. Hitting Enter in the display filter text entry field causes the
filter in that field to be applied (if it's not invalid).
Is the "File/Reload" menu item useful any more? You don't have to do
"File/Reload" (or control-R) to apply a display filter now.
