As of now these are the open ninja issues that have to do with status display or ninja output. Listing them in hopes of a cohesive plan forming.

curses-based rule progress indicator #717
Support color in NINJA_STATUS #713
print "still waiting" for long running commands if we serialize on them #678
Address FIXME: Add --no-strip-ansi-escapes option #672
Throttle rate of output messages #663
Use ANSI escapes to output to Cygwin-based terminals #659
Proposed/still running #629
Add NINJA_SMART_TERMINAL environment variable, with on, off, and hide_newline options #581
Use SetConsoleTextAttribute on Windows to simulate color #486
Add a -q "quiet" option. #480
Automatically use pager for failed output #413
"smart" output (e.g. overprinting) doesn't work under cygwin #374
Slow down on big tool output #326
Feature request -- print elapsed time #267
Show progress when waiting #111