Re: Paging...

Nancy Deschenes (nancyd@alcor.concordia.ca)
Sun, 4 Dec 1994 14:21:22 -0500

In message "Re: Paging..." on Nov 22, you write:
> > Other suggestions?
>
> What I was suggesting was more of a time-related throttle on how
> frequently the status line gets updated. Something which is not
> quite the same as what Nance listed as option #3. The idea is to
> let the user set a minimum_update_interval (though we'd probably
> want a shorter name for the option...). The idea is that the time
> between updates of the status line would never be less than that
> number of seconds. It might be longer than the minimum, but it'd
> never be shorter.

[... much explanation deleted...]

Okay, I'm pretty sure I understand this option now :}

%upd_frequency <seconds>
(which can be shortened to %upd_freq, for those who dont want to type the
whole thing)

(in the followint description:
- n is the number of seconds set in %upd_frequency
- x is the number of lines pending)

- When a new line comes in and there is room for it on the screen, print it
- The first line received after the page is full is queued, and the
user gets the prompt "-- more lines pending --"
- for each line after that, queue it, and if it as been at least n seconds
since the prompt was last updated, update the prompt with something like
"-- More (at least x lines pending) --" (where x is the number of lines
queued at the moment, including the line just received).
- When the user hits 'enter' to send a message, update the prompt only if
if it has been n seconds since the last time it was updated.
- When the user hits return on an empty line (to get the next page of output)
display the next page of output; if there are still more lines, give
the "-- More (at least x lines pending) --" prompt every time, with the
new value of x.

- %upd_frequency 0
would leave things pretty much like they are at the moment, where each
incoming line causes the prompt to be updated.

This way, the user has a pretty good idea how many lines are pending,
except for the first n seconds after the page filled, or if there is
no activity for a while.

I think that this is pretty reasonable, and I'm starting to implement it.
Please comment before I finish, particularly if you dont like it!

Oh, and Garance, I hope I got it right this time! I understand that stuff
very fast, if you explain often!

Thanks,
Nance

-- 
Nancy Deschenes
      nancyd@alcor.concordia.ca