Re: Precision in the progress meter

Daniel Stenberg via curl-users (HE12025-11-10):
> (Posted to both lists for posterity, but strictly speaking this is a libcurl
> change so I prefer to have follow-ups there but I post on curl-users too
> since curl tool users are affected as well.)
> 
> In curl 8.17.0 I modified the standard progress meter display to use one
> more character per size shown. Six instead of the previous five. And it
> would use decimals if the number is less than 1000.
> 
> - 999999
> - 99999k
> - 99999M
> - 999.1G
> 
> etc
> 
> I did this because I thought added precision would be good. I was probably
> wrong. The added characters unfortunately made the numbers harder to read.
> 
> So this is a call for everyone: what do you think?
> 
> I'm trying to iprove the situation going forward by limiting the numbers
> slightly differently:
> 
> Max 5 digits without a unit and only display numbers less than 1000 with
> units but then with a decimal (using a total of 6 characters):
> 
> - 99999
> - 999.9k
> - 123.4M

Hi. Since nobody is answering, I can give my two cents.

I am not really seeing a difference between your two series of examples:
four significant digits plus decimal point plus unit prefix equals six
characters, one more significant digit when decimal point not necessary,
and one more when the prefix is absent.

A few considerations:

Two significant digits like coreutils does at it worst is not enough. I
think three significant digits starts to be enough. Four is absolutely
fine.

The fixed number of chars is important.

Avoid ≥5 digits in a row. Beyond 4, the eye can have trouble being sure
between 66666 and 666666 without thousand separators, and thousand
separators are awful.

On the other hand, prefer large numbers to small numbers with a decimal
point.

In other words (showing padding with an underscore):

	_9999K
	9.766M
	10.00M
	10.01M
	99.99M
	100.0M
	100.1M
	999.9M
	_1000M
	_9999M
	9.766G

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George
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