@Skillmon err...your code did not work at all

@Krishna what happened?

No progress bar at all.. I tried the code as it is

@Krishna it is not on the physical centre of the page, only of the text block.

@Krishna you have to compile at least twice.

I used latexmk, so it should compile as many times as needed, no?

@Krishna you made no change to the document?

None whatsoever

This is the same issue as what I faced with Christian Hupfer's answer to that original question

@Skillmon wait....spoke too early

Yes, it is at the bottom of the page indeed

@Krishna ^^^^ is my output on my machine.

@Skillmon Yup, I got the same too

Sorry, it was a subtle effect that my eyes missed it

@Krishna note that the code uses the current value of the page counter. This might cause issues if you change the \pagenumbering. If you have that issue I can work something out, too.

For a serious thesis document that goes online as well in a bound version, do you think I should go for this style?

@Skillmon I don't have much design sense

@Krishna I personally wouldn't in my thesis. But I used that style in presentations of mine.

@Skillmon Is it because, this is too flashy?

It is a helpful aid to the reader, bored after reading 50 pages or so, right in a 330 page document?

@Krishna no, not in the way I set it up (dark and light grey are not that flashy), but it just seems unnecessary. You have the page numbers. And on physical paper, you feel how much book is left.

@Skillmon Thank you. I shall experiment further, and chat/email you with my feedback if that's not a problem for you

@Krishna in digital distribution this might be different (and depends on the used viewer), but in print you don't need that progress bar, imho. But I'm no design guru either.

And, I guess I should just put it in my chapters, not in toc or appendices

@Krishna yes. Feel free to contact me if you have issues with it.

@Skillmon Superb. Much much appreciate this help of yours

@Skillmon You could consider turning this into a package.

@Krishna yes, that seems like a good idea :) You could include a boolean to switch it off or so.

:)

Yes, for the print version

@Krishna no, it's not that good. The design has some serious flaws, which are just not there in a beamer presentation. As I said, it blindly trusts the state of the page counter. In a book, in which page numbering could change once or twice, this is a huge drawback. And it would need much more customization options to be a package, with different types of progress bars, not only two rules of different colour.

@Krishna also, it is included in an undistributed package of mine (my beamer template I use in university, which is available for other students at the same institute if they so wish -- up till now I'm the only one who has ever used it, I guess)

@Skillmon I see

@barbarabeeton Hi barbara, that's an awesome :). btw I think we've corresponded by email in the past. In any case my webpage link is here on the site, and my email is in any of my package docs.

@Skillmon If tikz is loaded, I don't have to load pgf again for this, I guess

@Skillmon @Krishna I agree with this assessment. And if you're reading online, then your scrollbar or any number of other indicators will tell you how far along you are.

@Krishna yes. And pgf is only used for on ternary operation I was too lazy back then to use \if...\else...\fibranching back in the time...

@AlanMunn I read in a PDF reader that has no scrollbars

zathura

@Krishna very good viewer, indeed.

@Krishna (same here)

Similarly, llpp does not have a scrollbar

@Skillmon :)

@Krishna but you can configure zathura to have scrollbars.

Even in reading in viewers with scrollbars, sometimes people read PDFs in full-screen mode, and this feature is helpful.... For articles, it doesn't matter

@AlanMunn -- well, i'm totally scrambled at the moment. i'm retiring in a couple of weeks (my email address will change, but i'll update my profile before it happens), and am trying desperately to clean out 50+ years of accumulation. that's what happens to pack rats. but some things just have to be reacted to immediately.

but for a large thesis, I want to know when I am expected to be done....a visual aid is helpful for me at least

@Skillmon Yes, that's not the default configuration of zathura though

@Krishna and I'd never activate them :)

I guess, I could put Page x of 330, which is probably more professional than visual progressbar

but it doesn't quite give u a visual picture

@Krishna personally I never liked this approach.

@Skillmon You didn't like the graphical approach?

@barbarabeeton :) good luck with the clearing out process. I suspect among the trash there are some historical gems. The tricky part is figuring out which is which.

@Krishna no, the Page x of y.

@Skillmon yes, forces the reader to do additional processing in the head

@Skillmon Do you think the progress strip must be aligned to the bottom of the page?

@Krishna You could do \fancyfoot[CO]{Are we there yet?}\fancyfoot[CE]{No.} :)

@Skillmon I mean, from an aesthetic perspective

@AlanMunn hehe

@AlanMunn love it!

@AlanMunn and am now inclined to hide this gem inside my next report...

@Skillmon Yes you could do it on select pages to see if anyone actually reads them.

@AlanMunn You can't get feedback from students anyway, what's the point?

@Krishna but from supervisors.

@Krishna I'm trying. I've set up a bug tracker for the textbook I'm using.

@Krishna and we have an evaluation of each class at our university in which students can give feedback to the teacher/prof anonymously.

@Skillmon Yes, that' s the same at most decent universities... .My point is, it is not worthwhile to hide a easter egg in document hoping for student feedback on that page

@Krishna I'd still hide the easter eggs. Even if I don't get any feedback, perhaps I delighted a single student with it. Then it was worth it. (so idealistic...)

@Skillmon :)

@Krishna It doesn't have to, but this way it's the least intrusive, I guess.

@Krishna I'd make it thinner. That's too big, imho.

@Skillmon I seem to like the style in the screenshot. 2em high and slightly up from the bottom of the paper

@Skillmon Okay, so 1.75 em

@Skillmon there is a problem

The progressbar shows up in all the pages, even those before startofprogress command

@Krishna yes. That was intentional for me. I can quickly change this. You'll receive mail in a few minutes.

@Skillmon thank you

@Krishna new variant deactivates the bar before \StartOfProgress and after \EndOfProgress.

@Skillmon Thank you, got it. I shall try it and give you feedback

@Skillmon You seem to prefer very thin bars, at the very bottom of the page

aligned with the bottom edge of the paper

@Krishna it was for a presentation and should be noticeable but not too intrusive. Also it wasn't supposed to waste any space. That was the best compromise I could find.

@Krishna biggest problem is the statusbar of zathura hiding it by default...

@Skillmon yeah, which is why I need to go a bit higher

@Skillmon a bit thicker

and raised by about 2em from the bottom edge of the page

@Krishna will sleep now. Good night (it's 1am here).