File operation progress should be more visually stable
Current state of affairs
Currently, nautilus uses plain printf
to format progress indication such as 125 / 16839
in the small text below the progress bar. Since the the first number changes during the file copy operation, the following text moves dependent on the first number. See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/blob/master/src/nautilus-file-operations.c#L4053 for the code in question.
Desired behavior
Two things are needed to fix this:
- Make the text use tabular figures (see gtk#41 (closed))
- Since we know how many digits the first number will have at maximum, we can pad it with
U+2007 FIGURE SPACE
to be the same width regardless of value. We'd still need to figure out how this interacts with thousands separators.
Benefits of the solution
More visually stable and better to read UI.
Possible drawbacks
Added complexity to fix a visual annoyance that might not bother everyone.