Progress Use Cases (was Re: Progress event spec)

Hi Chaals,

I think to have further fruitful discussion, I think we need to agree  
on what the use cases for the progress event are. Let me propose what  
I think is at least one valid use case; if progress events cannot  
satisfy it, then I hope we can all agree it is insufficient.

The use case I propose is as follows: a reusable XBL2 control that  
shows a progress bar (either determinate or indeterminate), a  
percentage complete (when applicable), and a display of currently  
received bytes out of total bytes. It connects to an arbitrary event  
target via an event listener. I hope we will agree that we want  
something like this to be possible. This is the kind of very basic  
progress UI that native applications show, and if it was not  
correctly doable then clearly progress notification is insufficient.

Now, let's consider one aspect of this UI, the progress bar. The  
progress bar can be in one of three basic states, "disabled",  
"determinate" (showing progress out of a known total) or  
"indeterminate" (the barber pole or cylon eye that indicates progress  
out of an unknown total). When in the determinate state, it has an  
additional parameter that affects it's display, proportion complete,  
which goes from 0.0 to 1.0. Fundamentally, this progress bar is a  
state machine, with state transitions triggered by progress events  
received.

Now, since this control is general, it has to handle any kind of  
resource you might find on the internet. Just looking at http, this  
includes all the following cases:

A) A resource of known 0 size.
B) A resource of known nonzero size.
C) A resource of initially unknown size that ends up being 0 size.
D) A resource of initially unknown size that ends up being nonzero size.

Let's say the progress bar starts in disabled state. As soon as a  
load starts, you want it to go to either determinate (with some  
value, maybe 0) or indeterminate. In between, you want the progress  
bar to update. At the end, you want it to go back to indeterminate  
state (possibly after a brief pause at 100%). The events need to be  
able to disambiguate all of these state transitions. In addition,  
they should be able to handle an error part way through downloading  
or uploading a resource.

Now, let's go back to the issues I raised:


On Jan 27, 2007, at 6:21 PM, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> [Please follow up only to webapi...]
>
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:14:24 -0500, Maciej Stachowiak  
> <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 26, 2007, at 1:54 PM, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> following our face to face meeting, we are planning some changes to
>>> progress:
>>
>> Based on my experience designing the Objective-C API that drives the
>> progress bar and other progress indicators in Safari, I think these
>> proposed changes make the API unsuitable for common UI use cases.
>>
>>>
>>> 1. Make the "total" attribute 0 if the length is unknown, and drop
>>> the boolean "lengthComputable".
>>>
>>> The rationale is that if you really have a zero-length load, it is
>>> unlikely to
>>> ever have time to fire a progress event, and will almost certainly
>>> only fire any
>>> in a really degenerate case. Having a large number was a bad idea,
>>> since one day
>>> you will have a large number of bytes, and having anegative number
>>> meant having
>>> a signed instead of unsigned integer.
>>
>> That means on the first progress event, if there is no data, 0
>> progress out of a 0 total is indistinguishable from 0 progress out of
>> an indeterminate total. I think one common case for these events will
>> be to drive progress UI. Generally, common user interface toolkits
>> have different widgets for indeterminate and determinate progress.
>> This way, you can't tell which one to display on the first event.
>
> Agreed in principle. In practice, we felt that you were unlikely to  
> get a
> progress event with a value 0 except in the indeterminate case - if  
> you know
> that you are transferring 0 of a total of 0 bytes you simply fire  
> the load event
> instead rather than setting up and instantly destroying a transfer  
> widget. (If
> you want to do that, you can do it on load completing if you hadn't  
> got a
> progress event yet...)

So does the spec forbid dispatching a 0-current 0-total event when  
the total is known to be 0? I don't think it does. If it did, though,  
you would have know way of knowing when the load started for a known- 
empty resource, and such things do exist. If it doesn't, and your  
general-purpose progress bar widget receives a 0/0 event, you don't  
know whether to go to empty determinate progress bar or indeterminate  
progress bar. And you won't know which is right until the next "load"  
or "progress" event; in the case of a truly indeterminate resource,  
which could be a long time.

Either way, I think the API would not cover all the needed state  
transitions.

>> But
>> on the other hand, the network layer almost always knows the total is
>> indeterminate very early, so having a "totalKnown" or
>> "lengthComputable" boolean or whatever is no great burden.
>>
>>> 2. Remove the preload and postload events.
>>>
>>> You know when it finished, because the load event or whatever is
>>> spitting out progress will have finished.
>>
>> Would all things subject to progress events have a "load" event as
>> well? If so, I am ok with this. Otherwise, you can't tell when
>> something with an indeterminate total is done, so I would object.
>
> This is the crux of the issue. I would be interested in a use case  
> for a
> progress event that doesn't do this.

I'm not sure what you are asking. Progress events spec could be used  
for anything, and not all of them will necessarily fire a "load"  
event. For example, in HTML <link rel="stylesheet" href="foo.css">  
results in a load but does not, in current UAs, fire a "load" event.  
If progress events rely on a "load" event to give complete  
functionality, they should spec it.

>
>> Note also that many things currently subject to "load" events have
>> weird rules for when it does and doesn't fire (as opposed to the
>> "error" event or none at all).
>>
>>> You know when it started, because you got a progress event.
>>
>> The moment the load starts, the total is not known, and there are 0
>> bytes received, but with many protocols (for instance http) you will
>> know the total at or before the time the first data chunk is
>> received. Given this, I think it's good to have an event that tells
>> you when the connection has been initiated, before when you get any
>> network response back; the latter should be a progress event.
>
> Right. That is perfectly in line with what you can do under the  
> current spec,
> but we don't force it...

I'm not sure what you are saying is in line with the current spec.  
Are you saying it is permitted to send a 0/0 event, and then soon  
after 0/total for some known total? That would be weird. Also, our  
hypothetical general progress bar control could not rely on it,  
since, as you say, the spec does not require it. So there would be no  
way to write interoperable code that made use of this.

>
>>> 3. Add an uploadprogress
>>>
>>> It is possible to construct an XHR that is moving content up and
>>> down at the
>>> same time, so knowing when progress refers to one or the other is
>>> useful.
>>
>> This seems like a good change.
>>
>>> 4. Rename loadprogress to progress
>>>
>>> It's shorter.
>>
>> Seems ok but I wonder whether the event is appropriate for non-
>> loading cases of progress, and whether such cases will come up.
>
> Me too. In principle you might have a script which sends progress  
> events as it
> does some monstrous calculation on a table or something, and it  
> wouldn't load.
> It also wouldn't be transferring bytes. So it might do something  
> that looks very
> similar but is defined seperately. Should we be covering that range  
> of use case
> in this spec, or leave it for authors or a later group to spec out?

It would be hard to define a fully general notion of progress. The  
question is really whether to reserve the generic "progress" name for  
other things. I don't think it is that important though.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Sunday, 28 January 2007 09:25:55 UTC