rounding down totals

rounding down totals

[Ted Zlatanov]

In Gnus, I'd like to display the total number of messages less
precisely, rounding down to the nearest 10^3 power.  Basically:

1 => 1
100 => 100
1000 => 1K
5001 => 5K

I may get fancier with the rounding (e.g. 10+ for 12 and 100+ for 190),
but can anyone tell me if there is an easy way to plug this into the
formats, or do I have to write a bunch of user functions?

Thanks
Ted

Re: rounding down totals

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:43:44 -0600 Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote: 

TZ> In Gnus, I'd like to display the total number of messages less
TZ> precisely, rounding down to the nearest 10^3 power.  Basically:

TZ> 1 => 1
TZ> 100 => 100
TZ> 1000 => 1K
TZ> 5001 => 5K

TZ> I may get fancier with the rounding (e.g. 10+ for 12 and 100+ for 190),
TZ> but can anyone tell me if there is an easy way to plug this into the
TZ> formats, or do I have to write a bunch of user functions?

I came up with this.  It's extremely customized--you will probably not
like my choices at all, but I was trying to make them visually memorable
and somewhat meaningful.  The look comes out like this:

[ Gnus ♀♀♀♀♀♀♀+ ] 
  [ mine ♂+ ] 
          җҗҗҗҗҗ/җҗҗҗҗҗ    : mail 
*               /          : dev 
                /җҗҗ       : xy 
*               /          : zyx 
*               /          : hr 
              жж/жж        : xyz 
  [ main ♀♀♀+ ] 
              ♀+/♀♀+       : INBOX.mail 
...

I hope this is useful to someone.

In case you're wondering why not just show the counts, my goal was to
avoid numbers in the display.  Visually they are distracting IMO, when
you really want a graphical overview of the groups (the distinction is
similar to showing a table of numbers vs. showing a graph of the
numbers).

I'll see if I can play with actual graphics instead of Unicode symbols,
something like sparklines[1] but I need to find out what Emacs can do in
that area.

Ted

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkline

(setq
 gnus-topic-line-format "%i[ %u&topic-line; ] %v\n"
 gnus-group-line-format "%M%S%p%P %21uX:%B%(%g%)%l %O\n")

(defun gnus-user-format-function-X (group)
  "Return \"unseen/unread\".  For use in the group specifier."
  (let ((unread (tzz-summarize-number (string-to-number gnus-tmp-number-of-unread)))
        (unseen (tzz-summarize-number (gnus-number-of-unseen-articles-in-group gnus-tmp-group))))
    (if (not (or (string-equal unseen "0")))
        (format "%010s/%-010s" unseen unread)
      unread)))

;; this corresponds to a topic line format of "%n %A"
(defun gnus-user-format-function-topic-line (dummy)
  (let* ((topic-face (if (zerop total-number-of-articles)
			 'fl-comment-face
		       'fl-function-name-face)))
    (propertize
     (format "%s %s" name (tzz-summarize-number total-number-of-articles))
     'face topic-face)))

(defun tzz-summarize-number (n)
  (cond
   ((null n) "?")
   ((< n 3) (make-string n ?ж))
   ((< n 7) (make-string n ?җ))
   ((< n 10) (make-string n ?Җ))
   ((< n 50) (concat (make-string (/ n 10) ?♂) "+"))
   ((< n 500) (concat (make-string (/ n 50) ?♀) "+"))
   ((< n 1000) (concat (make-string (/ n 100) ?C) "+"))
   (t "M+")))