Re: Flipping url-show-status default

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> Why not show something if the connection is hung, which is the
> exceptional case?  % completed, byte count, and MIME type are completely
> useless information in the vast majority of the use cases.  So I would
> make it `show-url-status' a choice of nil, t, or 'error with 'error
> being the default.

I think it makes sense to eliminate (by default) most of those messages
except for percent complete, and to report the latter using the standard
Emacs progress-reporter mechanism.

> The "wait" cursor is not a good indicator for data retrieval.  Maybe the
> mode line can be updated with a numeric indicator like line-number-mode?
> It doesn't even have to be a number.  A pulsating icon to indicate an
> ongoing transfer would look good; it can have an overlaid A/T to
> indicate the number of active and total (active+hung) connections.  In
> text mode this can be done with spinning bars or something equally
> obnoxious :)

If anyone wants to improve the progress reporter, feel free.  One idea
I've had is for it to use the background of the echo area as a progress
bar (this will need some redisplay hacking, of course).