The progress bar that doesn't convey any sense of progress (was Re: ...)

[Martin Pool]

2009/12/2 Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>:
> Brian de Alwis writes:
>  > On 26-Nov-2009, at 9:31 PM, Martin Pool wrote:
>  > > The idea that we should show total_bytes/total_time rather than
>  > > instantaneous bytes/time is interesting to me.  I find it interesting
>  > > to see it change over time.
>  >
>  >
>  > I find the instantaneous rate useful.
>
> The problem is that at least in my experience there is no "the"
> instantaneous rate.  It varies from 0B/s to 500KB/s and back again
> with a period typically 1-2s.

I don't see that; I see it vary in a way that really does correlate
with my link speed (when flowing freely) or with bzr inefficiencies
when doing choppy operations.  That would explain why I like it more
than you.

There is some smoothing; perhaps there should be more.  Maybe your
network has very different characteristics.  It is possible that it
actually does transmit 500kb/s for a bit, then pause, in which case it
may be better not to hide that.

I have one specific idea which I could do today, in between piloting:
hide the progress bar and just show a spinner, plus the network
indicators, plus the nerdy text.  The progress bar is not in practice
a good indicator of overall progress until the code that feeds it is
updated, so maybe it's better of hidden?  It sounds like people would
generally prefer that.

The nerdy text too should be updated, but that requires a somewhat
longer project of grepping for all callers and updating them to
something more sensible, either as far as the text or the counter that
they show.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>