|From: Guy Harris | |On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 07:33:52AM +0100, Ulf Lamping wrote: |> Olivier Biot wrote: |> >I agree. However: should valid empty filters (such as a |single space) |> >be cleared or considered cleared? |> > |> If the user wants a single space, he should be able to use it, so I |> would tend to see this as a non emtpy filter. |> You will get a lot of difficult questions otherwise: is a tab also a |> whitespace, do we want to remove this and that too, |> why is character xyz not removed. This behaviour will be hard to |> describe for our users. | |Note that a display filter containing only white space compiles to a |null filter program, just as an empty string does. | |As such, I see a filter with a single space as an *empty* filter. (I |also consider the fact that no filter program is generated to be a |feature, not a bug.)
Hence I conclude that an empty filter (consisting of white space only) should be considered as cleared (which was my *personal* thought on this too). Should we implement this check and the deactivation of the "Apply" button and stuff, then we can add a short note to the documentation that you can still fool Ethereal by editing white space to force a full dissection. Should we want to avoid this, then we need to: 1. Store the last applied display filter *program* 2. Compare the new filter program with the stored one from step 1 whenever the display filter changes 3. Decide to make "Apply" visible (and to decide that the display filter may be applied) whenever the filter programs differ. Regards, Olivier _______________________________________________ Ethereal-dev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ethereal.com/mailman/listinfo/ethereal-dev
