Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> 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.

As proof of concept the appended patch. I don't use a special "%/"
format in the modeline; instead of there is `mode-line-progress-reporter'
which can be placed somewhere in `mode-line-format' (I've done it after
`mode-line-remote').

You call

(setq pr (make-progress-reporter))
(while t (progress-reporter-update pr))

No text in `make-progress-reporter' would be the modeline indicator;
a text based progress reporter still writes in the minibuffer:

(setq pr (make-progress-reporter ""))
(while t (progress-reporter-update pr))

> 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.

That's for later.

> Ted

Best regards, Michael.