Ethereal-dev: RE: [Ethereal-dev] patches to add interface descriptions

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From: "Graham Bloice" <graham.bloice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 10:30:49 +0100
> > I assume that, on Windows, the default interface description is the one
> > that comes from Winpcap.
>
> Yes, that's right (although I haven't tested it on Windows). If there
> isn't a user-supplied description for an interface, then whatever text
> "get_interface_list()" retrieved is simply copied with no changes.
>
> >> 1) I'm not sure if Windows/Unicode requires special string handling in
> >> the code I've submitted. If so, my patches do not handle it.
> >
> > As long as the descriptions come from the stuff returned by
> > "get_interface_list()", they're all ASCII.
>
> They do, in addition to "gtk_editable_get_chars()", which is used to get
> the string from the "Description:" text entry widget. I don't know if my
> code needs to handle something here due to wide/Unicode character sets,
> non-ASCII/English characters, etc. Maybe some conversion check/function?
>

Hmmm.  Latest build from CVS on Win32 (GTK 1.3.0, GLib 1.3.2).  On selecting
an item in the "Edit Interface Options" Interface list I get an unprintable
character in the Description field (an open square).

I'm also running into other problems with the changes:

1.  I'm unable to get any item saved to the preferences file, unless Hide
interface is set.
2.  I'm unable to get any description text saved at all.

On a UI note:

1.  The list boxes in the Interface Options dialog seem too shallow to me.
When an horizontal scroll bar is displayed, the list box isn't tall enough
to display even a single row of text completely.  I would suggest that the
list boxes be sized to display 2 and a fraction rows.
2.  It's not entirely obvious to me when changes take effect.  To see the
effect of changes, one has to dismiss the dialog, and redisplay it again.
Could the change of selected entry in the interface list be used to update
the top list?
3.  On Win32, get_interface_list() already adds an interface description
that describes the NIC type.  Should the user entered description replace
that text rather than adding to it when displaying the interface list in the
capture dialog?

Graham Bloice