Ben Fowler wrote:
> >That doesn't necessarily mean they'll associate the letter you've chosen
> >with the field (especially if more than one field begins with the same
> >letter). I *do* consider obviousness important, and would prefer not to
> >*have* to learn what the one-letter mnemonics mean before I can
> >understand a dissection.
>
> That is a perfectly good point & makes you free to give less weight
> to my idea. My perspective is that I know the protocol (or I am prepared
> to learn it) and want a tool to give me the bits in a reasonable format. I am
> one of the 'they' in you paragraph.
>
I know a lot of IP-family protocols pretty well. The set/not-set is
fine for me as a one who knows the protocols. A novice might need
something like
Urgent: Set [Urgent data exists in this datagram]
but then we are discussing whether or not Ethereal is a teaching tool or
a tool for protocol *analysis*. I prefer the latter even though I use
it in courses for teaching protocols.
I also would have a hard time associating letters with protocols unless
the letters were part of the spec (as is the case with C and Z bits in
some processors).
> >I consider the following:
> >
> > Flags: 0x0012 (SYN, ACK)
> > ..0. .... = Urgent: Not set
> > ...1 .... = Acknowledgment: Set
> > .... 0... = Push: Not set
> > .... .0.. = Reset: Not set
> > .... ..1. = Syn: Set
> > .... ...0 = Fin: Not set
> >
> >to display a collection of 6 one-bit Boolean bitfields, so I *do*
> >consider you to be dealing with bitfields.
I agree.
>
> You know the code better than I ever will. At the moment I feel
> that flags or booleans with are inherently on or off can with
> advantage be treated as a special case wheres bitfields
> are more like tiny its and should be treated as UINT or numeric.
I guess I'm misunderstanding. The example above seems to contain
Boolean bitfields. Some header values are 2-bit values (no pun
intended!) which can be interpreted as some sort of unsigned int as you
say.
>
--john
--
John McDermott jjm@xxxxxxxxxx
Writer and Computer Consultant
J-K International, Ltd.
+1 505/377-6293 - V
+1 505/377-6313 - F
