RE: make-progress-reporter suggestions: 'modeline and customizable progress-reporter--pulse-characters

[Drew Adams]

> Yes, to me *that* is the problem with the global indicators: 
> Emacs does not have a "global" anything in general: it may
> have several frames, none of which is more important than the other.

Some might be more important to a program or user, but yes, there is little way
to enforce or demonstrate such intention.

One thing that might be nice, if possible (depends perhaps on the window mgr)
would be to have a frame parameter (or other way to specify) to make a frame be
"always on top" - at least relative to frames that don't specify this (i.e.
maybe no specified order among the always-on-top frames).  And perhaps there
could be a choice between on top wrt other Emacs frames and on top wrt
window-mgr windows in general.

Since you can put nearly anything you like in a frame (subtle/gaudy, small/large
animated/still), and some frames (e.g. tooltips) can even dispense with
decoration (title bar etc.), this would enable lots of kinds (appearances) of
global thingies.  Their positions and appearances could be controlled at will -
completely open.

> So I think the way to add global indicators will have to go through an
> indirection: create a global thingy,

I'd say global thingies, unless you meant create a global thingy _type_, which
could be instantiated for multiple thingies (instances).

Again, a frame comes close, and being able to make a frame stay visible (on
top)would help.

> and then let the user decide where to display it

it -> them (would be my suggestion)