Re: [Ethereal-dev] Windows UI

[Chris Waters <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 05:47:53PM -0800, Chris Waters wrote:
> > I find that the packet decodes generated by Ethereal are great,
> > however as a Windows user I find that the TCL/Tk UI is ugly.  Moreover,
> > I don't know TCL and I want to add a number of the features on the
> > Ethereal wish-list---in particular: better filter support, ability to
> > edit and send packets, real-time packet capture, and enhanced packet
> > flow analysis.
>
> Fortunately, as none of Ethereal is written in TCL, you don't have to
> know TCL to add anything to Ethereal.  :-)

I stand corrected. The UI looks so similar to many Tk programs and the name
gtk ... I just assumed it was Tk. Regardless, I don't know gtk either.

> The ability to send packets depends on an underlying library offering
> that.  On Windows, WinPcap offers that; a future release of libpcap may
> support that for UNIX as well.

I was thinking more about the ability to choose a packet from the packet
list, edit it and then send it out again from the UI.

> > I took the 0.90 release of Ethereal and wrapped tethereal in a DLL
> > which my application calls through a new version of the main function.
> > I want to create a more generic, powerful and faster interface for
> > accessing Ethereal functionality from other programs.
>
> What functionality are you trying to access?  Accessing Ethereal
> functionality through Tethereal may not be the most convenient way to do
> it.

When I first started tethereal seemed to be the closest thing to what I
wanted. I agree that it is not the prettiest way to do it.

> We have plans to, eventually, export the stuff in "epan", plus the
> dissectors, as an API for doing packet dissection.

I guess that this is basically the same thing that I am talking about. Since
I am going to do it, I would really like to produce code which is useful to
others as well.

Regards,

Chris.