Greg Morris wrote:
As for your other comments, This is a change of my original error
equivalency feature that I tried to submit a few weeks ago.
I was busy and just missed that one, sorry for that ...
Guy had replied that it was similar to the expert features submitted
by yourself. He suggested that I utilize/interface with your module.
Instead of just referring you to the previous thread I will state what
this new feature is expected to do.
1. Utilizes the expert tap to acquire the different level messages.
2. Compares the messages and provides a total count for each message.
Although I'm personally don't work this way, I think others will do, so
you'll get an ACK on this ;-)
3. By selecting an entry and right clicking you can perform filtering,
finding, colorizing, and searching the internet.
Hmmm, just never thought about simply searching the internet on a
"keyword", good idea even for other areas of the GUI.
So similar to the expert dialog which gives a packet by packet view,
the combined statistics gives the overall view of the different levels
of messages. There is a separate tab for each level.
What is it I am trying to accomplish? A higher level view of the
expert data. For example, I can easily determine how many TCP
connection resets there are in the trace without having to walk
through the summary or the expert dialog and count them. Let's say
that I wanted to know the total number of HTTP 200 Ok packets in the
trace, the combined expert statistics would give me the global count.
If let's say I wanted to research what HTTP 200 Ok packets actually
mean, then I could right click on the entry and search the internet
(Currently default to Google) for the message string. A picture of the
combined stats was attached to the original email I sent.
Wow, even higher level info than the expert info dialog ;-)
My original thought was to somehow link both the combined expert
statistics with your expert statistics. But for now I was just trying
to get the overall functionality down. You had mentioned on the expert
page, or perhaps in email, about possibly storing the filter data and
including such features in the expert data.
I think you're referring to the wiki. I was thinking about a way to
extend the display filter engine, so e.g. you could filter to see only
packets which has an expert tag "warning".
If I am somehow stepping on your toes, then please tell me to drop
what I am doing.
No, please don't. The reason you've got such a rude criticism from me is
simple. The current usability of the various statistics dialogs is
really a bad thing. Take three various dialogs from the Statistics menu
and you'll get three different ways to do things, and that's very bad
IMHO. I think it's because people think about their problems and don't
try to provide a "common look and feel".
You've just "tripped the wire" to just add another statistics dialog
with another usability model (and even that isn't true referring to the
screenshots I've seen) ...
My intentions are to add functionality and improve the user
experience. If you feel that my efforts are not in the best interest
of the project then let me know.
You're providing interesting ideas (like a direct link to google
search), and do it in a generalized way, so others may benefit from your
work, IMHO the "project" is interested in your work.
Well, of course there will be differences in the future, but don't feel
discouraged by just a single Mail!
Regards, ULFL
P.S: Why not use the wiki page for discussion of ideas:
http://wiki.ethereal.com/Development/ExpertInfo? You may add a section
about your statistics or even start a new page from the current one (and
editing the wiki is really simple). This way, the ideas and concepts
won't be buried in the mailing list but will be collected in a central
place!