On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 07:07:36AM -0500, Karl Dahlke wrote:
[snip]
> .......... is clear and concise, and even a huge file only takes up
> a few hundred bytes on your screen or in your log buffer,
> and if you want to know how many megabytes so far,
> just hit control w (on my adapter) for the current column number,
> or read the word as "dot length 47", or however your adapter does it,
> as I'm sure there is some easy way.

On most terminals what happens is you reach 80 chars and then the dots
go on to the next line etc. Thus, a 300 mB file turns into nearly 4 lines of dots.

In your adapter, it's slightly different as it works purely based on newlines,
so this isn't a problem.

> If I reviewed the log buffer later, I wouldn't want to read
> 337 lines of 
> downloaded x
> downloaded x
> downloaded x
> downloaded x
> downloaded x
> instead of just one line of 337 dots.

Tbh I can see where you're coming from.
I'm not entirely sure I like either particularly.
In speakup what you get is that when the dots wrap on to the next line,
the line number increases and the columns count again from the left.
This means that you then have to work out how wide your terminal is,
where the download started etc to calculate the amount downloaded.
Whereas, with the "downloaded x" or perhaps just x interface you get lines of
scrolling numbers. Either way isn't the most usable experience.
This being said, as you don't particularly like the new interface proposal,
I'm ok leaving as is (with the 1 mB, or user configurable? change).

Cheers,
Adam.