Ethereal-users: Re: [ethereal-users] focus on last packet

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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 11:28:01 -0700 (PDT)
> Is there a way to make ethereal focus on the last packet received?
> 
> What I mean is you can highlight a packet and see it's decode.  Is
> there a way for the last packet received to always be highlighted
> and decoded?

"Always" in what sense?

If you're reading a saved capture file, or a live capture when you
haven't used the "Update list of packets in real time" option, there's
no way to make it choose, as the first packet to select, the last
packet; there's no guarantee that the last packet is more likely to be
of interest than the first packet.  However, you can easily highlight
the last packet by dragging the scrollbar to the bottom and clicking it.

If you're doing a live capture with "Update list of packets in real
time", then, if you don't have "Automatic scrolling in live capture"
enabled, it won't automatically select the last packet - because, by not
selecting "Automatic scrolling in live capture", you've explicitly asked
that Ethereal *NOT* scroll to display the last packet.  That way, you
can look at the display without having it scroll out from under you.

If you're doing a live capture with "Update list of packets in real
time", and you *do* have "Automatic scrolling in live capture" enabled,
it scrolls the packet list so that the most recently received packet is
displayed, but doesn't automatically select the last packet.  We could
probably arrange to make it do so; that'd increase the CPU usage of
Ethereal when doing such a capture, but I don't know whether that'd
make a difference between "leaves enough CPU for the capture" and
"doesn't leave enough CPU for the capture".