8
A long running algorithm certainly could use some method of indicating it's progress. But it would be inappropriate for the algorithm to know that it's talking to a progress bar.
The algorithm should be able to talk to adapters that can take what the algorithm says about it's progress and turn it into a progress bar, a log file, or noise over an audio ...
4
I think this problem is the same as circle packing.
Unless you want very large numbers of islands and perfect packing, the most efficient way of doing it is simply to hard code the positions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_packing_in_a_square
You can see as the number of islands increases the difference between perfectly packed and simple triangular ...
1
This is how I have approached this problem. There are a few points I find important.
Possibility to subdivide the progress into parts. It seem fairly common to either have separate phases in the work, or that each work item takes a considerable amount of time, so each work item should also report progress.
I do not want to worry about the update frequency ...
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