On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, David Laight wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 07:26:25AM +1100, Daniel Carosone wrote:
>>
>> I object because the dots show movement, but lose information on how
>> many more dots are needed till it finishes, especially when I have a
>> screenful of dots.
>
> I changed it because having a long list of numbers output quickly is
> neither user-friendly, nor useful.  The old code was also double-spacing
> on many terminal emulaters (eg from sysinst on a serial console).
>
> As a 'something is still happening' outputting dots and numbers have
> much the same value, except that with dots the command itself is
> unlikely to scroll off the screen.
>
> Naive users are also likely to wonder what all the numbers mean - after
> all you'll never want all of them! Although the first few could be deemed
> useful.

When I'm good and paranoid, I write down several of the numbers. I have
to admit it didn't often do me much good, it's one of those things I'm
used to.

-- 
Hisashi T Fujinaka - htodd@twofifty.com
BSEE(6/86) + BSChem(3/95) + BAEnglish(8/95) + MSCS(8/03) + $2.50 = latte