Spencer:
>>> sajolida:
>>> I'll do that in #11210
>
> I don't understand the difference between Onion Circuits and Tor Status
> [#11161].
I think there's an engineering difference only :)
>> intrigeri:
>> Thanks a lot!
>
> Onion looks good! Here are some thoughts:
>
> • Unless there are plans for more information in the dropdown, the Onion
> Circuit click would be more effective if it opened the dialog instead of
> presenting an option to do so in a dropdown. The softkeyboard functions
> like this, so it seems okay.
This has already been discussed with Alan in the past. I was also up to
having a click on the onion open the list of circuits directly by Alan
said the GNOME Shell guides are different and items in the top bar
should display menus.
The virtual keyboard, the OpenPGP applet, and the Pidgin and KeePassX
stray icons are leftovers from before GNOME Shell and are handled right
now with the topIcons extensions which is the one causing display
problems. So we shouldn't base new designs on this old paradigm.
> • The log fills up nicely but the info disappears. It would be great to
> have control over this, if not only to have enough time to read and
> understand.
What do you mean by "log" here?
I think there's some work needed on the terminology here. So far, I
understand that:
- *circuit* is a Tor circuit: a selection of 3 Tor nodes made by Tor.
- *stream* seems to be some connection made by a program that goes
through a *circuit*. You can have several *streams* per circuit.
But then why is this called *stream* and not *connection* which is
the common TCP terminology [1] and probably more frequent in
applications as well, for example:
- in Pidgin "xxx@??? disconnected. SSL Connection Failed."
- in Firefox "The connection to this website is secure."
[1]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol#Connection_establishment
- *path* seems to mean *circuit or stream*. If so then I think this
brings in another term in play and that we would do better without it,
and use instead *circuit or connection* explicitly.
> • Path section shows both circuits and log info. Could be either/or, or
> emphasize the difference between with color coding.
Why not. But we already have indentation to mark the different between
circuit and stream/log/connection so I think it's no big deal. I'll let
Alan comment on this.
> • There are no details when clicking on the path, as the instructions
> suggest we expect. I am unsure if this is the case with some log items
> but all items would benefit from having details of some sort.
I experienced this while connecting to Tor using a bridge. This is
#11195. Can you confirm and comment on the ticket maybe?
> • Access to an explicit log would be great.
I don't understand what you mean by this.
> • It is not clear what the one hop paths are. They eventually disappear.
Right...
> • Some are 2 hops. These also eventually disappear.
The last time I asked Alan to filter some of the noise in the list he
was not really up for it so I'm afraid of asking again...
> • Maybe country could be the path labels, moving the router name to the
> details section where country is.
>
> • Regarding the subtitle of the dialog, the difference between circuits
> and streams isn't clear.
+1
> • Status labels aren't clear: Extended?
Did you get "Extended" as status label? I wonder what this means
indeed... I think these labels come directly from Tor.
> • Maybe circuit visualization should accompany 'Open Onion Circuits'
> option in the dropdown.
Yeap. We should be able to finding something more explicit than 'Open
Onion Circuits', maybe:
- 'View Tor circuits and connections'
- or only 'Tor circuits and connections'
- or even 'Tor circuits'
> • Why are there these circuits? How are they determined? Can these be
> manual or is there value to automatic potential path generation?
They are built automatically by Tor. Allow the user to choose them would
make them less random and less anonymous.
