Large Fields
Suppose you want to write a decoder for a protocol that has fields that can be very large. Any email protocol (POP, SMTP, IMAP, X.400) would serve as a good example; one of these may carry an entire email message as a data field possibly running to several megabytes. Fields of such a size can be managed, but it is hardly practical to display the entire contents in the Frame Display window. The conventional thing to do is to display just the first 128 characters in the Decode Pane; if the user needs to see more he can select the field in the Decode Pane and then open the Event Display window that will come up showing the same data. The SMTP decoder (SMTP.DEC) serves as a good case study of working with such a protocol.