[tor-bugs] #22266 [Core Tor/Tor]: fix the jump-to-80% issue

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#22266: fix the jump-to-80% issue
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 Reporter:  catalyst       |          Owner:
     Type:  defect         |         Status:  new
 Priority:  High           |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.3.2.x-final
Component:  Core Tor/Tor   |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal         |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  usability, ux  |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                 |         Points:
 Reviewer:                 |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by dcf):

 Replying to [ticket:22266 catalyst]:
 > If enough existing directory information is available, the bootstrap
 progress as reported to the logs and the control connection jumps from 0%
 to 80% almost immediately.  This is misleading and causes user
 frustration, as reported by Linda's study.

 I was one of the people who helped with the study. As I understand it, the
 problem has more to do with Tor Launcher than with tor. I don't think the
 problem has to do with cached directory information. Rather, it is that
 Tor Launcher resets the state of the progress bar to 0% every time the
 progress screen is displayed, even though the tor process's (hidden)
 percentage is greater than 0%.

 Imagine you start bootstrapping and watch the progress bar get to 60%,
 then you get impatient and hit Cancel. (tor is in fact still bootstrapping
 in the background even though the GUI doesn't reflect that.) You fiddle
 with the configuration and try to bootstrap again. At this point, the
 progress bar misleadingly shows 0%, even though the tor process is still
 at 60%. Now, as soon as tor makes a little more progress (say to 65%), the
 progress bar will immediately update itself to the new value, giving the
 effect of a jump from 0% to 65% when it should have been from 60% to 65%.
 What users found misleading was the progress bar going back to 0% after
 they changed the configuration; even though in reality the percentage
 hadn't changed or had even increased, they assumed that their
 configuration changes had caused bootstrapping to make negative progress.

 I thought that the solution would be to have Tor Launcher either cache its
 last seen progress percentage, so it can reinitialize the progress bar
 properly, or else have some background listener that tracks the percentage
 status even when the progress bar is not actually on screen.

 I might be misinterpreting the ticket description.

 > When bootstrapping with existing directory information, we should
 rescale the progress numbers so they advance on something resembling a
 linear time scale, which is probably closer to what users expect to see.

 Does that mean that if bootstrapping got to 60%, was cancelled, and then
 restarted, that the progress bar would visually reset back to 0%, but that
 the remaining 40% would be stretched to fit a 0–100 scale? E.g. 60%→0%,
 70%→25%, 80%→50%, 90%→75%, 100%→100%?

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22266#comment:2>
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