qt: Fix wrong unit on hourly progress increase #14553

The Progress increase per hour metric is displayed with the unit % (see image). This seems wrong, since a change in percentage should be presented as percentage points or percentage units. Maybe not a huge problem, but I for one found it confusing when I first saw it.

I would have preferred to submit a PR changing to percentage points, but that would add a translation term. So, In order to keep the change small, I suggest the abbreviation %p, which seems to be commonly used (albeit "non-standard"). Everybody knows the % symbol, and if they are not familiar with %p they can still get the main idea of the metric.

Alternatively, pp can be used. This abbreviation seems to be even more common for English speaking users, but may not be familiar to the rest of the world.

Or should it be added as a new translation term? (Could also be done as the next step)

<img width="956" alt="progress_increase_per_h" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/453092/47361317-e4cdc680-d6d1-11e8-97a4-528d7432322b.png">

NOT tested for e.g. layout issues. I haven't set up a build environment yet.

I agree that we should not use percent when we mean percentage points, but I'm afraid "%p" is even more confusing. Try to find a better alternative :-)

I would have read "%p" as a typo or a pointer address format specifier :-)

Thanks for weighing in. I'm not a native English speaker so I'm probably not the best person to say which abbreviations are commonly used or not... Let's see if anyone has a better suggestion. If not, I think we should add it as a new translation term.

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018, 17:13 practicalswift, notifications@github.com wrote:

I agree that we should not use percent when we mean percentage points, but I'm afraid "%p" is even more confusing. Try to find a better alternative :-)

I would have read "%p" as a typo or a pointer address format specifier :-)

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I think it is already clear from context that it is referring to pp

@MarcoFalke About a week ago, I was in the unique position of not having used bitcoin-qt for over three years, (and not much before that) so I was almost like a new user when I fired it up. So I tried to really think about what the experience would be like for a new user.

And yes, I did figure out that the value most likely was referring to percentage points, but I was not 100% sure, and thinking about this took a big chunk of my attention focus as a new user. The user should not have to think about what the UI is telling him/her, it should be crystal clear. Maybe the hourly progress increase should be removed altogether, or - better - replaced with some graphical component (like a histogram with sync speed history since the sync started).

Maybe a "?" sign right next to the variable, so when you hoover the mouse over, it explains what this variable shows or how to be interpreted.

@WetPuppyKisses Thanks for commenting. Yes, an explanatory tooltip could be used to tell the user what is going on. It would still need addition of a translation term, though. And, as I commented earlier, the message from the UI to the user should be crystal clear. If possible, no detailed explanation should be needed. UX is hard...

I mentioned that a graphical component could be used. Below is an example of a download progress bar that illustrates the concept. (This is just an image I found using Google) The user can clearly see if the sync speed has increased or decreased during the sync progress. I think that is really what the user wants/needs, as opposed to only seeing the current sync speed (and trying to remember what it was several hours ago)

There is still a need for better UX when it comes to communicating progress to the user, in my opinion. But I am closing this PR now.