PrintTemporary in ParallelTable

Question

I thought of a possible answer to Monitor doesn't work with ParallelTable but it doesn't work as I hoped it would.

This accumulates print cells instead of deleting them as intended. Can it be fixed?

ParallelTable[
  NotebookDelete[x]; x = PrintTemporary[i];
  Pause[1]; i,
  {i, 1, 15}
]

I thought that x would be local to each kernel, and this would print four cells (for four cores) that would be deleted and replaced with each iteration.

I then thought that the value of x was lost between iterations, but this also fails to delete the print cells:

ParallelTable[
  x = PrintTemporary[i]; NotebookDelete[x];
  Pause[1]; i,
  {i, 1, 15}
]

Answer 1

This will display a list that's updated as long as the calculation runs, and vanishes afterwards:

(* Pattern that translates the kernel's ID to
   a number from 1 to $KernelCount *)
kernels = ParallelTable[$KernelID -> i, {i, $KernelCount}];
SetSharedVariable[kernels]; (* for Mathematica 7 *)

(* This is the list that will display each kernel's current operation *)
SetSharedVariable[currentNumber]
currentNumber = ConstantArray[0, Length@kernels];

PrintTemporary["Current calculations:"];
PrintTemporary@Dynamic[currentNumber];

(* Start the computation *)
ParallelTable[
    Pause@RandomReal[{0, .25}]; (* Long calculation *)
    currentNumber[[$KernelID /. kernels]] = i,
    {i, 100},
    Method -> "FinestGrained"
]

The immediate output looks like this:

Current calculations:

{15, 24, 16, 23, 25, 29, 27, 20}

Now wait for ParallelTable to finish, and the above will disappear, leaving only the result:

{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ...}

You can modify the Dynamic statement according to your needs of course, such as adding a // Column to the argument to print it nicer etc.