1 Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
3 Copyright (C) 2001-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
7 If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we
8 appreciate your help; please write to emacs-devel@gnu.org so we can be
9 aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do
10 it best. Also to check that it hasn't been done already, since we
11 don't always remember to update this file! It is best to consult
12 the latest version of this file in the Emacs source code repository.
14 Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be prepared to sign
15 legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work to the FSF.
16 For more details on this, see the section "Copyright Assignment"
17 in etc/CONTRIBUTE. That file also contains some more practical
18 details about getting involved.
20 As well as the issues listed here, there are bug reports at
21 <http://debbugs.gnu.org>. Bugs tagged "easy" ought to be suitable for
22 beginners to work on, but unfortunately we are not very good at using
23 this tag. Bugs tagged "help" are ones where assistance is required,
24 but may be difficult to fix. Bugs with severity "important" or higher
25 are the ones we consider more important, but these also may be
26 difficult to fix. Bugs with severity "minor" may be simpler, but this
29 * Tentative plan for Emacs-24
31 ** concurrency: including it as an "experimental" compile-time option
32 sounds good. Of course there might still be big questions around
33 "which form of concurrency" we'll want.
34 ** Overhaul of customize: sounds wonderful.
35 ** better support for dynamic embedded graphics: I like this idea (my
36 mpc.el code could use it for the volume widget), though I wonder if the
37 resulting efficiency will be sufficient.
39 ** Improve the "code snippets" support: consolidate skeleton.el, tempo.el,
40 and expand.el (any other?) and then advertise/use/improve it.
41 ** Improve VC: yes, there's a lot of work to be done there :-(
43 ** Random things that cross my mind right now that I'd like to see (some of
44 them from my local hacks), but it's not obvious at all whether they'll
46 *** multiple inheritance for keymaps (to get rid of the
47 fix_submap_inheritance hack and to more cleanly express the
48 relationship between minibuffer-local-*-map): I've had this locally
49 for a long time, but the details of the semantics is somewhat ... delicate.
50 *** prog-mode could/should provide a better fill-paragraph default
51 that uses syntax-tables to recognize string/comment boundaries.
52 *** provide more completion-at-point-functions. Make existing
53 in-buffer completion use completion-at-point.
54 *** "functional" function-key-map that would make it easy to add (and
55 remove) mappings like "FOO-mouse-4 -> FOO-scroll-down",
56 "FOO-tab -> ?\FOO-\t", "uppercase -> lowercase", "[fringe KEY...] ->
57 [KEY]", "H-FOO -> M-FOO", "C-x C-y FOO -> H-FOO", ...
60 * Simple tasks. These don't require much Emacs knowledge, they are
61 suitable for anyone from beginners to experts.
63 ** Convert modes that use view-mode to be derived from special-mode instead.
65 ** Major modes should have a menu entry.
67 ** Check if all items on the mode-line have a suitable tooltip for all modes.
69 ** edebug and debugger-mode should have a toolbar.
70 It can use the same icons as gud.
72 ** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
75 ** Convert all defvars with leading `*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
76 of appropriate :type and :group.
78 ** Remove any leading `*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
79 [done?] [A lot of them are in CC Mode.]
81 ** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
82 This needs a bit of care, since often people have become used to
83 expecting such variables to always be defined, eg when they modify
84 things in their .emacs.
86 ** See if other files can use generated-autoload-file (see eg ps-print).
88 ** Write more tests. Pick a fixed bug from the database, write a test
89 case to make sure it stays fixed. Or pick your favorite programming
90 major-mode, and write a test for its indentation. Or a version
91 control backend, and write a test for its status parser. Etc.
92 See test/automated for examples.
94 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
96 ** Flymake's customization mechanism needs to be both simpler (fewer
97 levels of indirection) and better documented, so it is easier to
98 understand. I find it quite hard to figure out what compilation
101 I suggest totally rewriting that part of Flymake, using the simplest
102 mechanism that suffices for the specific needs. That will be easy
103 for users to customize.
105 ** Compute the list of active keymaps *after* reading the first event.
107 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
108 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
110 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
111 For related problems consult the thread starting with
112 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01346.html
114 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
116 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
117 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
118 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
119 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
120 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
122 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
123 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
124 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
126 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
129 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
130 variables whose values are currently hidden.
132 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
133 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
134 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
135 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
137 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
139 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
140 using a heuristic of some kind?
142 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
143 See rms message of 11 Dec 05 in
144 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2005-12/msg00165.html,
145 and the rest of that discussion.
147 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
148 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
149 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
150 without menu and tool bar lines.
152 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
153 and they should create Custom buffers.
155 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
157 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
159 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
160 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
161 recording which file the latest definition came from.
163 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
165 ** Consider improving src/sysdep.c's search for a fqdn.
166 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00782.html
168 ** Find a proper fix for rcirc multiline nick adding.
169 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00684.html
171 ** Check for any included packages that define obsolete bug-reporting commands.
172 Change them to use report-emacs-bug.
173 *** Related functions:
176 **** org-submit-bug-report
179 **** c-submit-bug-report
180 **** ffap-bug and ffap-submit-bug (obsoleted)
181 [Do all of them need changing?]
183 ** Allow fringe indicators to display a tooltip (provide a help-echo property?)
185 ** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
186 like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
188 ** `dired-mode' should specify the semantics of `buffer-modified-p' for
189 dired buffers and DTRT WRT `auto-revert-mode'.
191 ** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
192 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
194 * Important features:
196 ** "Emacs as word processor"
197 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-11/msg00515.html
199 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWYG word
200 processing. That is why we added text properties and variable
201 width fonts. However, more features are still needed to achieve this.
203 ** Extended text-properties (to make overlays "obsolete")
204 *** Several text-property planes
205 This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
206 get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
207 simply use the `face' property in the `font-lock' plane.
208 Each property would come with an Elisp merge-function. The merge
209 would be performed in add-text-properties.
210 *** zero-width text-properties.
211 ** Having tabs above a window to switch buffers in it.
213 ** "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations. We have
214 had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
215 beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
216 advantage of them. Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.
218 Perspectives work well even if you do the equivalent of C-x 4 C-f
219 because of the distinction between view windows vs file windows. In
220 Emacs this is more or less the "dedicated window" feature, but we have
221 never really made it work for this.
223 Perspectives also need to interact with the tabs.
225 ** FFI (foreign function interface)
226 See eg http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00246.html
228 One way of doing this is to start with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
229 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
230 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
232 ** Replace unexec with a more portable form of dumping
233 See eg http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg01034.html
234 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-06/msg00452.html
236 One way is to provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
238 ** Imenu could be extended into a file-structure browsing mechanism
239 using code like that of customize-groups.
241 ** Display something in the margin on lines that have compilation errors.
243 ** Compilation error navigation bar, parallel to the scroll bar,
244 indicating where in the buffer there are compilation errors.
245 Perhaps we could arrange to display these error indications on top
246 of the scroll bar itself. That depends on to what extent toolkit
247 scroll bars are extensible.
249 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
250 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
251 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
253 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
255 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
257 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
258 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
259 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
260 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
263 Another place to look is the Wikipedia article at
264 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format
266 It currently points to the latest spec of RTF v1.9.1 at
267 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10725
269 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
270 properly with variable-pitch faces.
272 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
273 (see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/clustering/chi04.pdf).
275 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
276 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
277 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
278 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
279 same value of this property.
280 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
282 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
284 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
285 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
287 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
289 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
290 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
291 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
293 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
294 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
296 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
297 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
298 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
299 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
300 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
301 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
302 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
303 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
304 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
306 ** The GNUstep port needs some serious attention, ideally from someone
307 familiar with GNUstep and Objective C.
309 * Other features we would like:
311 ** A more modern printing interface. One that pops up a dialog that lets
312 you choose printer, page style, etc.
313 Integration with the Gtk print dialog is apparently difficult. See eg:
314 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-03/msg00501.html
315 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-04/msg00034.html
317 ** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
318 from the emacsclient process.
320 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
321 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
323 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
325 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
326 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
328 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
329 and put some other errors under it.
331 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
332 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
334 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
336 ** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
338 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
339 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
340 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
341 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
342 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
344 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
345 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
346 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
347 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
348 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
349 customization buffers.
351 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
352 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
353 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
354 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
355 use to view the advice.
357 ** Add a function to get the insertion-type of the markers in an overlay.
361 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status messages.
363 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
365 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
366 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
367 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
368 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
370 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
371 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
372 *** nested string-delimiters (for PostScript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
373 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
374 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
375 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
376 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
377 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
378 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
380 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
382 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
383 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
384 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
386 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
387 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
388 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
389 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
391 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
392 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
393 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
394 where one language is embedded in another language. See
395 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
396 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches taken by others.
398 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
399 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
400 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
402 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
403 output to a different filter.
405 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
408 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops.
410 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
412 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
413 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
414 undo-tree, in ELPA, already does this; its saving code could be
415 integrated without requiring the use of undo-tree.
417 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
418 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
419 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
420 when the user tries to use the menubar.
422 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
423 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
424 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
425 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
427 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
428 significant work), PSGML, _possibly_ ECB.
429 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg01493.html
430 Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
433 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
434 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
435 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
438 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
439 macros in cl-macs. [Is this still relevant now that cl-lib exists?]
441 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
442 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
443 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
445 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
446 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
447 [Basic support added 2013/10:
448 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00904.html ]
450 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
451 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
452 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
454 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
456 ** Split out parts of lisp.h.
460 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
461 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
463 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
464 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
465 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
466 [Do the existing -Q and -D cover this, or is more needed?]
468 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
469 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on this.]
471 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
473 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
475 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
477 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
478 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
480 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
481 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?). [does
482 doc-view.el do this, or could it be extended to do this?
483 Does ImageMagick obsolete this idea?]
485 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
486 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
487 thought this was feasible.]
489 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
490 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
491 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
493 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
494 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
495 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
496 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
497 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
498 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
499 already for Emacs 23 and consult fx.]
501 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
504 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
505 when the body only calls primitives.
507 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
509 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
510 colors of the applicable faces.
512 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
514 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
515 or the end of the buffer.
517 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs's garbage collector
518 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
519 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
521 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
522 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
523 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
524 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after attributes.
526 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
527 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
528 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
529 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
531 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
532 artist, ansi-color, array, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
533 completion, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
534 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
535 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit,
536 makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
537 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
538 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
539 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
540 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt,
541 feedmail [?], uce, gametree, page-ext,
542 refbib, refer, scribe, texinfo, underline,
543 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, xml,
544 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
545 probably in separate manual.
547 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
548 the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
549 with the color used for the transparent regions.)
551 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
552 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
553 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
554 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
556 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
557 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
559 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
560 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
561 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
562 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
563 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
564 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
567 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
568 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
570 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
571 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
572 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
573 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
574 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
576 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
577 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
578 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
579 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
580 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
581 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
582 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
583 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
584 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
586 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
587 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
590 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
592 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
593 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
595 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
596 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
597 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
598 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
600 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
601 but which can also be used as a modifier).
603 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
604 Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
605 lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
607 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
609 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
610 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
612 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
614 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
616 ** Possibly add a "close" button to the modeline.
617 The idea is to add an "X" of some kind, that when clicked deletes
618 the window associated with that modeline.
619 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02416.html
621 * Things to be done for specific packages or features
627 **** The event loop does not redraw.
628 A problem is that redraw don't happen during resize,
629 because we can't break out from the NSapp loop during resize.
630 There was a special trick to detect mouse press in the lower right
631 corner and track mouse movements, but this did not work well, and was
632 not scalable to the new Lion "resize on every window edge" behavior.
633 [As of trunk r109635, 2012-08-15, the event loop no longer polls.]
635 **** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
636 up on top of all others (probably fixed in bug#17439)
638 **** free_frame_resources, face colors
640 **** Numeric keysetting bug.
644 **** Open file:/// URLs.
646 **** Put frame autopositioning into C code somewhere -- if loc = same, offset.
648 **** Automap ctrl-mouse-1 to mouse-3.
650 **** Deal with Finder aliases somehow.
652 **** Ctrl-F2 won't pull up menus.
654 *** Other / Low Priority:
656 **** Better recognition of Unicode scripts / Greek / composition.
658 **** Undo for color-drag face customization.
660 ** Bidirectional editing
662 *** Support reordering structured text
663 Two important use cases: (1) comments and strings in program sources,
664 and (2) text with markup, like HTML or XML.
666 One idea is to invent a special text property that would instruct the
667 display engine to reorder only the parts of buffer text covered by
668 that property. The display engine will then push its state onto the
669 iterator stack, restrict the bidi iterator to accessing only the
670 portion of buffer text covered by the property, reorder the text, then
671 pop its state from stack and continue as usual. This will require
672 minor changes in the bidi_it structure.
674 This design requires Lisp-level code to put the text properties on the
675 relevant parts of the buffer text. That could be done using JIT
676 fontifications, or as a preliminary processing when the file is
677 visited. With HTML/XML, the code that puts text properties needs to
678 pay attention to the bidi directives embedded in the HTML/XML stream.
680 *** Allow the user to control the direction of the UI
682 **** Introduce user option to control direction of mode line.
683 One problem is the header line, which is produced by the same routines
684 as the mode line. While it makes sense to have the mode-line
685 direction controlled by a single global variable, header lines are
686 buffer-specific, so they need a separate treatment in this regard.
688 **** User options to control direction of menu bar and tool bar.
689 For the tool bar, it's relatively easy: set it.paragraph_embedding
690 in redisplay_tool_bar according to the user variable, and make
691 f->desired_tool_bar_string multibyte with STRING_SET_MULTIBYTE. Some
692 minor changes will be needed to set the right_box_line_p and
693 left_box_line_p flags correctly for the R2L tool bar.
695 However, it makes no sense to display the tool bar right to left if
696 the menu bar cannot be displayed in the same direction.
698 R2L menu bar is tricky for the same reasons as the mode line. In
699 addition, toolkit builds create their menu bars in toolkit-specific
700 parts of code, bypassing xdisp.c, so those parts need to be enhanced
701 with toolkit-specific code to display the menu bar right to left.
703 ** ImageMagick support
705 *** image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
706 ImageMagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
707 preferring the ImageMagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in jpegs.
709 Try (setq image-type-header-regexps nil) for a quick hack to prefer
710 ImageMagick over the jpg loader.
712 *** For some reason it's unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
713 image bundle using the :index feature. The ImageMagick "display"
714 command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the Emacs
715 code. It seems ImageMagick tries to unpack every page when loading the
716 bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase in Emacs though.
718 ImageMagick 6.6.2-9 introduced a bugfix for single page djvu load. It
719 is now much faster to use the :index feature, but still not very fast.
721 *** Try to cache the num pages calculation. It can take a while to
722 calculate the number of pages, and if you need to do it for each page
723 view, page-flipping becomes uselessly slow.
725 *** Integrate with image-dired.
727 *** Integrate with docview.
729 *** Integrate with image-mode.
730 Some work has been done, e.g. M-x image-transform-fit-to-height will
731 fit the image to the height of the Emacs window.
733 *** Look for optimizations for handling images with low depth.
734 Currently the code seems to default to 24 bit RGB which is costly for
735 images with lower bit depth.
737 *** Decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
738 functions for image size etc.
744 **** Command to insert an element template, including all required
745 attributes and child elements. When there's a choice of elements
746 possible, we could insert a comment, and put an overlay on that
747 comment that makes it behave like a button with a pop-up menu to
748 select the appropriate choice.
750 **** Command to tag a region. With a schema should complete using legal
751 tags, but should work without a schema as well.
753 **** Provide a way to conveniently rename an element. With a schema should
754 complete using legal tags, but should work without a schema as well.
758 **** Implement C-c C-o C-q.
760 **** Install pre/post command hook for moving out of invisible section.
762 **** Put a modify hook on invisible sections that expands them.
764 **** Integrate dumb folding somehow.
766 **** An element should be able to be its own heading.
768 **** Optimize to avoid complete buffer scan on each command.
770 **** Make it work with HTML-style headings (i.e. level indicated by
771 name of heading element rather than depth of section nesting).
773 **** Recognize root element as a section provided it has a title, even
774 if it doesn't match section-element-name-regex.
776 **** Support for incremental search automatically making hidden text visible.
778 **** Allow title to be an attribute.
780 **** Command that says to recognize the tag at point as a section/heading.
782 **** Explore better ways to determine when an element is a section
785 **** rng-next-error needs to either ignore invisible portion or reveal it
786 (maybe use isearch oriented text properties).
788 **** Errors within hidden section should be highlighted by underlining the
791 **** Make indirect buffers work.
793 **** How should nxml-refresh outline recover from non well-formed tags?
795 **** Hide tags in title elements?
797 **** Use overlays instead of text properties for holding outline state?
798 Necessary for indirect buffers to work?
800 **** Allow an outline to go in the speedbar.
802 **** Split up outlining manual section into subsections.
804 **** More detail in the manual about each outlining command.
806 **** More menu entries for hiding/showing?
808 **** Indication of many lines have been hidden?
812 **** Should rng-validate-mode give the user an opportunity to specify a
813 schema if there is currently none? Or should it at least give a hint
814 to the user how to specify a non-vacuous schema?
816 **** Support for adding new schemas to schema-locating files.
817 Add documentElement and namespace elements.
819 **** C-c C-w should be able to report current type id.
821 **** Implement doctypePublicId.
823 **** Implement typeIdBase.
825 **** Implement typeIdProcessingInstruction.
827 **** Support xml:base.
829 **** Implement group.
831 **** Find preferred prefix from schema-locating files. Get rid of
832 rng-preferred-prefix-alist.
834 **** Inserting document element with vacuous schema should complete using
835 document elements declared in schema locating files, and set schema
838 **** Add a ruleType attribute to the <include> element?
840 **** Allow processing instruction in prolog to contain the compact syntax
843 **** Use RDDL to locate a schema based on the namespace URI.
845 **** Should not prompt to add redundant association to schema locating file.
847 **** Command to reload current schema.
849 *** Schema-sensitive features
851 **** Should filter dynamic markup possibilities using schema validity, by
852 adding hook to nxml-mode.
854 **** Dynamic markup word should (at least optionally) be able to look in
855 other buffers that are using nxml-mode.
857 **** Should clicking on Invalid move to next error if already on an error?
859 **** Take advantage of a:documentation. Needs change to schema format.
861 **** Provide feasible validation (as in Jing) toggle.
863 **** Save the validation state as a property on the error overlay to enable
864 more detailed diagnosis.
866 **** Provide an Error Summary buffer showing all the validation errors.
868 **** Pop-up menu. What is useful? Tag a region (should be grayed out if
869 the region is not balanced). Suggestions based on error messages.
871 **** Have configurable list of namespace URIs so that we can provide
872 namespace URI completion on extension elements or with schema-less documents.
874 **** Allow validation to handle XInclude.
876 **** ID/IDREF support.
880 **** Make it work with icomplete. Only use a function to complete when
881 some of the possible names have undeclared namespaces.
883 **** How should C-return in mixed text work?
885 **** When there's a vacuous schema, C-return after < will insert the end-tag.
886 Is this a bug or a feature?
888 **** After completing start-tag, ensure we don't get unhelpful message
891 **** Syntax table for completion.
893 **** Should complete start-tag name with a space if namespace attributes
896 **** When completing start-tag name with no prefix and it doesn't match
897 should try to infer namespace from local name.
899 **** Should completion pay attention to characters after point? If so, how?
901 **** When completing start-tag name, add required atts if only one required
904 **** When completing attribute name, add attribute value if only one value
907 **** After attribute-value completion, insert space after close delimiter
908 if more attributes are required.
910 **** Complete on enumerated data values in elements.
912 **** When in context that allows only elements, should get tag
913 completion without having to type < first.
915 **** When immediately after start-tag name, and name is valid and not
916 prefix of any other name, should C-return complete on attribute names?
918 **** When completing attributes, more consistent to ignore all attributes
921 **** Inserting attribute value completions needs to be sensitive to what
922 delimiter is used so that it quotes the correct character.
924 **** Complete on encoding-names in XML decl.
926 **** Complete namespace declarations by searching for all namespaces
927 mentioned in the schema.
929 *** Well-formed XML support
931 **** Deal better with Mule-UCS
933 **** Deal with UTF-8 BOM when reading.
935 **** Complete entity names.
937 **** Provide some support for entity names for MathML.
939 **** Command to repeat the last tag.
941 **** Support for changing between character references and characters.
942 Need to check that context is one in which character references are
943 allowed. xmltok prolog parsing will need to distinguish parameter
944 literals from other kinds of literal.
946 **** Provide a comment command to bind to M-; that works better than the
949 **** Make indenting in a multi-line comment work.
951 **** Structure view. Separate buffer displaying element tree.
952 Be able to navigate from structure view to document and vice-versa.
954 **** Flash matching >.
956 **** Smart selection command that selects increasingly large syntactically
957 coherent chunks of XML. If point is in an attribute value, first
958 select complete value; then if command is repeated, select value plus
959 delimiters, then select attribute name as well, then complete
960 start-tag, then complete element, then enclosing element, etc.
962 **** ispell integration.
964 **** Block-level items in mixed content should be indented, e.g:
969 **** Provide option to indent like this:
970 <para>This is a paragraph
971 occupying multiple lines.</para>
973 **** Option to add make a / that closes a start-tag electrically insert a
974 space for the XHTML guys.
976 **** C-M-q should work.
980 **** Figure out workaround for CJK characters with regexps.
982 **** Does category C contain Cn?
984 **** Do ENTITY datatype properly.
986 *** XML Parsing Library
988 **** Parameter entity parsing option, nil (never), t (always),
989 unless-standalone (unless standalone="yes" in XML declaration).
991 **** When a file is currently being edited, there should be an option to
992 use its buffer instead of the on-disk copy.
994 *** Handling all XML features
996 **** Provide better support for editing external general parsed entities.
997 Perhaps provide a way to force ignoring undefined entities; maybe turn
998 this on automatically with <?xml encoding=""?> (with no version
1001 **** Handle internal general entity declarations containing elements.
1003 **** Handle external general entity declarations.
1005 **** Handle default attribute declarations in internal subset.
1007 **** Handle parameter entities (including DTD).
1011 **** Do complete schema checking, at least optionally.
1013 **** Detect include/external loops during schema parse.
1015 **** Coding system detection for schemas. Should use utf-8/utf-16 per the
1016 spec. But also need to allow encodings other than UTF-8/16 to support
1017 CJK charsets that Emacs cannot represent in Unicode.
1019 *** Catching XML errors
1021 **** Check public identifiers.
1023 **** Check default attribute values.
1027 **** Explore whether overlay-recenter can cure overlays performance problems.
1029 **** Cache schemas. Need to have list of files and mtimes.
1031 **** Make it possible to reduce rng-validate-chunk-size significantly,
1032 perhaps to 500 bytes, without bad performance impact: don't do
1033 redisplay on every chunk; pass continue functions on other uses of
1034 rng-do-some-validation.
1036 **** Cache after first tag.
1038 **** Introduce a new name class that is a choice between names (so that
1041 **** intern-choice should simplify after patterns with same 1st/2nd args
1043 **** Large numbers of overlays slow things down dramatically. Represent
1044 errors using text properties. This implies we cannot incrementally
1045 keep track of the number of errors, in order to determine validity.
1046 Instead, when validation completes, scan for any characters with an
1047 error text property; this seems to be fast enough even with large
1048 buffers. Problem with error at end of buffer, where there's no
1049 character; need special variable for this. Need to merge face from
1050 font-lock with the error face: use :inherit attribute with list of two
1051 faces. How do we avoid making rng-valid depend on nxml-mode?
1055 **** Don't stop at newline in looking for close of start-tag.
1057 **** Use indentation to guide recovery from mismatched end-tags
1059 **** Don't keep parsing when currently not well-formed but previously
1062 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag by popping an open element if
1063 there was a mismatched end-tag unaccounted for.
1065 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag open on the hypothesis that there
1066 was an error in the namespace URI.
1068 **** Better recovery from ill-formed XML declarations.
1070 *** Usability improvements
1072 **** Should print a "Parsing..." message during long movements.
1074 **** Provide better position for reference to undefined pattern error.
1076 **** Put Well-formed in the mode-line when validating against any-content.
1078 **** Trim marking of illegal data for leading and trailing whitespace.
1080 **** Show Invalid status as soon as we are sure it's invalid, rather than
1081 waiting for everything to be completely up to date.
1083 **** When narrowed, Valid or Invalid status should probably consider only
1084 validity of narrowed region.
1088 **** Need to give an error for a document like: <foo/><![CDATA[ ]]>
1090 **** Make nxml-forward-balanced-item work better for the prolog.
1092 **** Make filling and indenting comments work in the prolog.
1094 **** Should delete RNC Input buffers.
1096 **** Figure out what regex use for NCName and use it consistently,
1098 **** Should have not-well-formed tokens in ref.
1100 **** Require version in XML declaration? Probably not because prevents
1101 use for external parsed entities. At least forbid standalone without version.
1103 **** Reject schema that compiles to rng-not-allowed-ipattern.
1105 **** Move point backwards on schema parse error so that it's on the right token.
1109 **** Use rng-quote-string consistently.
1111 **** Use parsing library for XML to texinfo conversion.
1113 **** Rename xmltok.el to nxml-token.el. Use nxml-t- prefix instead of
1114 xmltok-. Change nxml-t-type to nxml-t-token-type, nxml-t-start to
1117 **** Can we set fill-prefix to nil and rely on indenting?
1119 **** xmltok should make available replacement text of entities containing
1122 **** In rng-valid, instead of using modification-hooks and
1123 insert-behind-hooks on dependent overlays, use same technique as nxml-mode.
1125 **** Port to XEmacs. Issues include: Unicode (XEmacs seems to be based on
1126 Mule-UCS); overlays/text properties vs extents; absence of
1127 fontification-functions hook.
1131 **** Allow face to depend on element qname, attribute qname, attribute
1132 value. Use list with pairs of (R . F), where R specifies regexps and
1133 F specifies faces. How can this list be made to depend on the document type?
1137 **** Support RELAX NG XML syntax (use XML parsing library).
1139 **** Support W3C XML Schema (use XML parsing library).
1141 **** Command to infer schema from current document (like trang).
1145 **** XSLT schema should take advantage of RELAX NG to express cooccurrence
1146 constraints on attributes (e.g. xsl:template).
1150 **** Move material from README to manual.
1152 **** Document encodings.
1156 **** How can we allow an error to be displayed on a different token from
1157 where it is detected? In particular, for a missing closing ">" we
1158 will need to display it at the beginning of the following token. At the
1159 moment, when we parse the following token the error overlay will get cleared.
1161 **** How should rng-goto-next-error deal with narrowing?
1163 **** Perhaps should merge errors having same start position even if they
1164 have different ends.
1166 **** How to handle surrogates? One possibility is to be compatible with
1167 utf8.e: represent as sequence of 4 chars. But utf-16 is incompatible
1170 **** Should we distinguish well-formedness errors from invalidity errors?
1171 (I think not: we may want to recover from a bad start-tag by implying
1174 **** Seems to be a bug with Emacs, where a mouse movement that causes
1175 help-echo text to appear counts as pending input but does not cause
1176 idle timer to be restarted.
1178 **** Use XML to represent this file.
1180 **** I had a TODO which said simply "split-string". What did I mean?
1182 **** Investigate performance on large files all on one line.
1184 *** Issues for Emacs versions >= 22
1186 **** Take advantage of UTF-8 CJK support.
1188 **** Supply a next-error-function.
1190 **** Investigate this NEWS item "Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding
1191 systems for HTML/XML files automatically."
1193 **** Take advantage of the pointer text property.
1195 **** Leverage char-displayable-p.
1199 ** Cleanup all the GC_ mark bit stuff -- there is no longer any distinction
1200 since the mark bit is no longer stored in the Lisp_Object itself.
1202 ** Refine the `predicate' arg to read-file-name.
1203 Currently, it mixes up the predicate to apply when doing completion and the
1204 one to use when terminating the selection.
1206 ** Merge ibuffer.el and buff-menu.el.
1207 More specifically do what's needed to make ibuffer.el the default,
1208 or just an extension of buff-menu.el.
1210 ** Replace linum.el with nlinum.el
1211 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-08/msg00379.html
1213 ** Use pcomplete by default in shell-mode.
1214 This means to make it behave (by default) more like the current code.
1215 Use it also for read-shell-command, M-x compile, ...
1217 ** Merge sendmail.el and messages.el.
1218 Probably not a complete merge, but at least arrange for messages.el to be
1219 a derived mode of sendmail.el. Or arrange for messages.el to be split
1220 into a small core and "the rest" so that we use less resources as long as
1221 we stick to the features provided in sendmail.el.
1223 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
1224 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
1225 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
1228 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
1229 It might be better to replace it with Lisp, using the byte compiler.
1230 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-06/msg00037.html
1232 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
1233 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
1234 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
1235 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
1236 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
1238 ** Add "link" button class
1239 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
1240 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
1241 class to the standard "link" face.
1245 ** Maybe replace etags.c with a Lisp implementation.
1246 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-06/msg00354.html
1248 ** Maybe replace lib-src/rcs2log with a Lisp implementation.
1249 It wouldn't have to be a complete replacement, just enough
1250 for vc-rcs-update-changelog.
1254 ** `make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
1256 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
1257 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
1259 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
1260 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
1263 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1265 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1266 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1267 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1268 (at your option) any later version.
1270 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1271 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1272 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1273 GNU General Public License for more details.
1275 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1276 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.