Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> Fourth, the first part of the comment begins with this:
>
>      The instances of "s" in the following formats are
>      the SI symbol "s" (meaning second), and should not be translated.
>
> Why should they not be translated?  In order to avoid problems
> with grammatical congruence in languages like Polish?

Yes. This is part of the SI standard. SI abbreviations are supposed to be 
identical in all languages, regardless of grammar issues.

> It would be nicer to use a fixed number of
> decimals so that the message doesn't unnecessarily "jump".

Yes, and since the messages you're talking about are supposed to come out once a 
second, dd should just omit everything after the decimal point.

> Sixth, the format string uses %g, which means that the
> number of seconds will be displayed in exponential form
> when the number becomes very large.  Is that intentional?

Yes, it's been that way since that code was introduced in 2004 (before 
status=progress was added). The idea I had back then was that we want more than 
1 digit when transfer times are short, and that we needn't bother with lots of 
digits when transfer times are long. I've never heard of a real-world situation 
where the exponential notation actually gets used (more than 11 days for the 
transfer, if I calculate aright) so the issue is to some extent academic.

Thanks for your other comments. I installed the attached patch, which I hope 
addresses them.