Out of sync warning update #6107

Updates out of sync warnings in order to mitigate confusion caused by the time it takes to sync with the Network.

"(out of sync)" warning label changed to "(out of sync, please allow a few days to become synchronized)."

In response to issue #6106

The translations will need to be updated also. How has the translation process occurred in the past? I'd love to continue on this fix.

Have to NACK because it would make the minimum width of the main window to 1090px (at least on OSX with lang=en). Either we search for a shorter string or much better we make sure there are line breaks (set a max-width for this widget).

Here a screenshot with the mainwindow in min-width state:

You can verify this by comparing this PR (https://builds.jonasschnelli.ch/pulls/6107/) against the last nights build (https://builds.jonasschnelli.ch/nightlybuilds/2015-05-05/).

Concept ACK, but please find a way to make this look correct in the GUI.

@jonasschnelli I think I'm going to go for a line break.

Sorry. The NACK was a little bit harsh. I agree with the concept. If you pull in/cherry pick https://github.com/jonasschnelli/bitcoin/commit/dff6bebca28071114a0cd934b93e17fb4669dcbd you will have floating/word wrapping labels.

@essofluffy: had to change the indentation and the 2nd labels alignment. Please take https://github.com/jonasschnelli/bitcoin/commit/507d9caa764e3b7023c4c037e0d0fee6552c9122. Make sure you git cherry-pick 507d9caa764e3b7023c4c037e0d0fee6552c9122 instead of rebasing on top (git add origin jonasschnelli https://github.com/jonasschnelli/bitcoin; git fetch jonasschnelli; git cherry-pick 507d9caa764e3b7023c4c037e0d0fee6552c9122)

@jonasschnelli thanks!

I agree on the concept but I think we should put the longer warning somewhere else, for example in a notification area at the top of the overview page. Replicating this extended warning two times on the overview screen is too much. Keep the message after Transactions an Balances as-is.

Also hard-coding "a few days" may result in unnecessary panic in users. The out-of-sync warning will be shown even if only a few (~10) blocks out of sync. Ideally wouldn't displaying an estimate of sync progress be the responsibility of the progress bar?

@laanwj I'm inclined to agree with you. I think a banner similar to the "This is a pre-release test..." one in jonasschnelli's screenshot above could better serve this warning. The warning banner could state something like, "please allow a few days to synchronize if this is your first sync, otherwise please refer to the progress bar below." This shouldn't alarm someone just syncing up the last few blocks, but should inform a new user of the wait to expect. Another option could be to have a warning in the white space explaining everything going on, but that may be overkill. What do you think? @jonasschnelli

I agree with @laanwj. We should place the out-of-sync information somewhere in the status-bar at the very bottom.

See the mockup below. What about placing such warning icons and provide the text (as it is in this PR) as icon tooltip? "A few say" should probably replaced with a more accurate text-part.

What i really miss while synchronizing is:

• a clear information of how many MB/GB i have still to download
• a % value viewable at first sight.

Both should be there without interaction (no tooltip).

tested ACK, but I also agree with tying some kind of % indicator with the warning into the bottom bar, since that is also where most of the information for network sync seems to be located already.

edit: need to mention this tests @jonasschnelli's branch, which builds on top of this PR

attached: screenshots

@jonasschnelli @faizkhan00 I like the idea with the alert icon (probably a red icon) with a tool tip. It would allow for a longer description. I think a % value/MB/GB download could be a different PR soon in the future. I just wanted to address the confusion the sync has caused in this PR Let me know what your thoughts are.

a clear information of how many MB/GB i have still to download
a % value viewable at first sight.

@essofluffy @jonasschnelli for those, I think % indicator can be calculated as currentBlock/bestChainTipBlock and then you can give some approximate Mb/Gb left using 1MB blocks as the value, so 500 blocks remaining would show ~approx 500mb remaining Thoughts?

I like @jonasschnelli 's alert icons.

Displaying Mb/Gb gives the false impression that the sync is bounded by the downloading of data, which is not true on most hardware. Transaction processing, and of that mostly ECDSA verification is the actual bottleneck. We already display a % indicator in the progress bar! (try hovering the mouse over it) The useful estimate here would be the time until sync, but this is difficult to estimate as it would have to integrate various factors.

(there has also been a long discussion in the past on relative versus absolute progress bars, and even various iterations of the code, which I don't care to repeat: we eventually settled on a bar displaying absolute progress, because with the relative bar displaying "progress from last start to full sync" users were confused that the sync was starting from the beginning every time)

I like [@jonasschnelli](/bitcoin-bitcoin/contributor/jonasschnelli/) 's alert icons. Curious, where can one find those?

I agree that finding a useful estimate of total sync time is a bit of a challenge, can I ask then, is it possible to record the time it takes to verify a block, and then maybe take the average of the last 10, and then multiply that by the remaining blocks to get a absolute approximate time for sync completion?

Pseudocode is like:

times = [ 123456789, 234567890 ]

verify():
    startTimer()
    verify_stuff(stuff)
    blockMillisTime = recordTime()
    updateProgress( blockMillisTime )

updateProgress(int millis):
   times.push( millis )
   average( times )
   updateUI()

Or something very close to it...

@faizkhan00 The mockup wit the alert icons can be seen here: https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/178464/7478239/a17e9832-f359-11e4-9b55-8e348386e492.png

probably superseded by #6110 but this PR got the stone rolling. Thanks @essofluffy and i hope you come up with more UI issues.

Thanks for finishing it up! @jonasschnelli
I'll be continuing to work on the UI and wherever I can help out!

Closed, please refer to PR #6110