[Rd] Rgui bug in Windows: leftover download dialog (PR#7964)

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 6/23/2005 1:23 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 murdoch at stats.uwo.ca wrote:
> 
>> On 6/22/2005 4:15 PM, murdoch at stats.uwo.ca wrote:
>>> In Windows, if a download is interrupted (by switching to the console
>>> window and hitting ESC), the download status dialog can be left
>>> onscreen, with no apparent way to get rid of it (other than stopping and
>>> restarting R).
>>>
>>> To duplicate:
>>>
>>> Run this:
>>>
>>> a <- available.packages()
>>> download.packages(a, 'c:/temp')
>>>
>>> Then, during a particularly long download, switch to the console window
>>> and hit ESC.
>>>
>>> This affects R-devel, as well as 2.1.1.
>>
>> Now fixed in R-devel and R-patched.  I also set it so the dialog retains
>> its position if you move it out of the way; it was pretty irritating to
>> have it pop up in the middle of the screen every time in a multiple file
>> download.
> 
> I don't think you can do simultaneous downloads, and is not the `it' 
> different progress bar windows?

Right, simultaneous downloads are not possible.

> Do you mean that the next instance of a progress bar will come up where 
> the last one was?  

Yes, but see below.

> That seems not the standard ergonomics on GUI systems, 
> in which a new window is treated as a new window and not the same as an 
> old one.  

It would be good ergonomics if there was just one progress bar window 
when multiple files were selected for download, but I think that's too 
much trouble to do, since the C function called by download.file doesn't 
get told it's part of a multiple download sequence.

The changes I made make just one progress bar window for the whole 
session, and make it visible when downloading and invisible otherwise. 
It's a change to the UI (one long-lived window instead of many 
short-lived ones).

 > I hate it when Windows puts Firefox up where I dragged the last
> Firefox window (or even where another user dragged it).

I think that's really Firefox moving itself to where it last was when 
you closed it; as far as I know Windows doesn't remember such things 
unless asked.  There's probably some Mozilla option to control that 
behaviour.

The retention I put in is entirely within an R session.  Each download 
just makes the same progress window visible where you last left it, 
instead of creating a new one.  This way if you're doing something like 
installing all of CRAN, you can push the progress bar out of the way 
while the downloads are going on, and it will stay out of the way.  It 
does seem to have an annoying habit of grabbing the focus away from some 
programs, but not all; I'm not sure what's going on there or whether 
this can be fixed.

Duncan Murdoch