Re: How can I get a progress bar

[David Bateman]

On 05/16/2011 07:28 PM, Mike wrote:
>  
> 
> From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Chethan S
> Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 5:22 AM
> To: Octave Help
> Subject: How can I get a progress bar
> 
>  
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I am using 'nlfilter' to carry out an image processing operation. As the 
> image is very large the operation takes about half an hour to complete and 
> show the output. But to ascertain the progress of the operation I find no way 
> except to look at the blinking cursor at the terminal. For such operations 
> MATLAB displays a small dialog box which shows the progress. Can I enable 
> such a functionality in Octave? At least a progress line (a line from 0 
> moving towards 100 %) instead of blinking cursor would be OK.
> 
> Thanks and regards,
> 
> Chethan S.  
> 
>  
> 
> Hi Chethan,
> 
> You might want to reconsider having a progress bar running. It looks nice, 
> but the overhead will add to the time it takes for the reported function to 
> complete. There is significant overhead in setting up the bar, calculating 
> the position, and displaying it. However, if a function does take 30 minutes 
> to complete, then the overhead required for the progress bar may very well 
> get lost in the noise.
> 
> Regards,
> 


The miscellaneous package of octave-forge has the waitbar function, but
its implemented using the termcap library that has certain compatibility
issues, particularly with windows. Without the termcap library it prints
a fairly ugly wait bar to stdio

Once we have proper ui functionality this should be reimplemented as an
octave core function.

D.