<warner> (one of the maddening things about darcs is that the "406/445"
	 messages, that look like they should be progress indicators,
	 aren't. In "A/B", the B keeps growing)				[10:48]

Zooko wrote:
> New submission from Zooko <zooko@zooko.com>:
> 
> <warner> (one of the maddening things about darcs is that the "406/445"
> 	 messages, that look like they should be progress indicators,
> 	 aren't. In "A/B", the B keeps growing)				[10:48]

Interesting; but I've seen other tools follow a similar pattern where 
the "outer" estimate grows, and I for one have grown used to it. (For 
instance, debian's apt and related tools do it in a few places. Even 
fsck has a tendency to do it.) Something I find nice is that darcs 
doesn't bother giving an approximate (constantly changing) percentage 
mark for "unbounded" indicators. (Whereas well known indicators in a few 
places in darcs do provide percentages.)

I'm assuming that the hashed-storage file index will cut down on the 
number of progress messages of this sort as it gets better integrated...

Does warner have any suggestions for how this might be bettered from a 
UI standpoint?

I was just thinking that one simple UI change suggestion to implement 
would be to simply add a tilde prefix or plus suffix:

Fooing the bar (~406/445)...

or

Fooing the bar (406/445+)...

warner writes:

"""
Simply emitting one number would help. Printing "A/B" in which A is less
than
B suggests that when A finally equals B, we'll be done (which is why the
ever-receding goal is so frustrating). Showing merely "A" wouldn't make such
a suggestion.

This sort of output is more of a pacifier than a real progress/completion
indicator: it reassures the user that the program hasn't locked up and is
still making progress of some sort, but can't provide any useful information
about how long they have left to wait. Printing one number would make it
more
obvious to the user exactly what is and isn't being provided.
"""

Let's see if "Fooing the bar (406/445+)..." works better

Going to implement another idea:

Fooing the bar (40 done, 80 more queued)...

Resolved in Darcs 2.4 (X done, Y queued).  Thanks!