Re: Flipping url-show-status default

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Fri, 01 Oct 2010 18:21:52 -0400 Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> wrote: 

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

In graphical mode, I don't think the echo area should be used for
progress.  It makes text harder to read if there's two backgrounds and
this would commandeer a large portion of screen real estate.  I'd put it
in the modeline as a tiny icon or text indicator.

A simple improvement to the current state would be to use SVG icons
instead of the spinning and progress text indicators.  I have hacked up
something for my Gnus article counts (tzz-make-ungradient here returns a
SVG data string set up for a 32x28 icon showing the number 324):

(when (image-type-available-p 'svg)
  (with-temp-buffer
    (let* ((svg-data (tzz-make-ungradient 32 28 324))
           (image (create-image svg-data 'svg t :ascent 'center))
           (props `(display ,image intangible ,image)))
      (insert "i")
      (add-text-properties (point-min) (point-max) props)
      (buffer-string))))

So this can be an immediate improvement.  Then these icons can be moved
to whatever screen area we decide to use (I assume SVG images can be
shown in the modeline but haven't tested it).

I can't work on it currently (gotta finish GnuTLS, then auth-source.el,
then gnus-sync.el, etc. :) but if anyone is interested I can send them
the full code.  If not I'll get to it eventually.

Ted