make-progress-reporter suggestions: 'modeline and customizable progress-reporter--pulse-characters (was: auth-source-search: annoying messages)

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:06:40 +0100 Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote: 

MA> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> I was hoping for something less noticeable, like `line-number-mode'
>> but with the progress-reporter spinner taking up one char width in the
>> modeline.

MA> Nice idea. Could be "%/" (or similar) in `mode-line-format'. If
MA> existing, progress-reporter spins in the modeline instead of the
MA> minibuffer.

How about (showing both proposed use cases)

(setq pr1 (make-progress-reporter 'modeline))
(setq pr4 (make-progress-reporter 'modeline 0 100))
(while t 
  (progress-reporter-update pr1)
  (progress-reporter-update pr4))

to work in conjunction with a %/ in the modeline?  The idea is that it
is guaranteed to be 1 or log10(max)+2 characters (non-numeric or
numeric) wide in this mode and it won't make any noise in the echo area.

Another suggestion for progress-reporter--pulse-characters for both
modeline and regular use: there are some Unicode glyphs which could be
used if the font supports them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Balls#Harvey_Balls_in_Unicode

Maybe progress-reporter--pulse-characters could be customizable with
some presets like the above.

Ted