Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Colour filter problem

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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:15:29 -0800

On Jan 23, 2004, at 4:16 PM, el_lobo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

If I give a filter name of tcpdata (say) and then use the add
expression button to create the filter string - and choose TCP in the
left column, and 'is present' in the right column. The string is then
created as 'filtertcp', which I originally thought was a predefined
string for showing TCP traffic. However after a little more
experimentation I realised that by just setting the string to 'tcp' it
did what I wanted. So the main issue seems to be with the string
definition via the GUI, which is a little unfortunate as it is a
usability feature (but not the end of the world, provided you dig
further).

I think the code is trying to be "helpful" by making the filter name field default to "name" and the filter expression field default to "filter", presumably to let you know what's supposed to go there.

However, from your experience, I'm not convinced that it's really helping, given that, if you're going to enter your own filter, you have to clear the filter expression (regardless of whether you just type an expression in there or construct the expression using "Add Expression"), and given that "name" isn't a very meaningful filter name (and you can't have more than one filter with a particular name).