Ethereal-dev: Re: [ethereal-dev] static vs dynamic column width

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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 16:45:06 -0700 (PDT)
> (Cross-posted to ethereal-dev and ethereal-user)

It's "ethereal-users", not "ethereal-user" (hey, we've succeeded at
least a little - we *do* have more than one user :-)).

I'll retransmit my reply, with the complete copy of your message, for
the benefit of those on "ethereal-users" who care, although I think
we've only heard from the other Guy :-).

> For "Live" capture & display, if we start out with a static column
> size and don't resize, we won't be able to view all of the information
> should a longer line be written to the (for example) Info column.  The
> text storage area may be larger, but the horizontal scroll bar won't
> take you to the end of the text string unless the column size has been
> adjusted. 

"Info" is probably typically the rightmost field, so resizing it won't
cause other fields to move; I think that was the main complaint the
other Guy had.  If so, making a special case for "Info" might be OK.

> I haven't played with the -S feature yet.  I assume that you can
> select a frame for display, rather than having all of the frames just
> zoom by without being able to take a closer look.  If so, actually
> seeing the data would be nice. 

Yes.

> The other item which is related to this issue is the
> "Follow-the-Stream" changes.  If this is going to put each of the actual
> application messages on an individual line rather than whatever-sized
> chunk of data TCP happened to blast out, then I won't be as worried
> about the full info string.  Right now, you wouldn't see some commands,
> but if each application message gets a display line, then you'd only
> miss seeing some of the parameters rather than one or more entire
> messages.  Could someone give me a few details on the follow-the-stream
> implementation?
> 
> For the columns other than "Info", the default sizes are probably okay
> (meaning static width would be okay) during the capture, as they seem to
> have realistic values for the width. 
> 
> Regarding user's preference for column type/widths in a .preference
> file, perhaps we should just have a preference for static or dynamic
> sizes.  Of course, you could do both, having a preference for static or
> dynamic for each column type, and even a preferred width. 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Phil Techau