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1 Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
2
3 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6
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. Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be
11 prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work
12 to the FSF.
13
14 * Tentative plan for Emacs-24
15
16 ** concurrency: including it as an "experimental" compile-time option
17 sounds good. Of course there might still be big questions around
18 "which form of concurrency" we'll want.
19 ** Overhaul of customize: sounds wonderful.
20 ** better support for dynamic embedded graphics: I like this idea (my
21 mpc.el code could use it for the volume widget), tho I wonder if the
22 resulting efficiency will be sufficient.
23 ** Spread Semantic.
24 ** Improve the "code snippets" support: consolidate skeleton.el, tempo.el,
25 and expand.el (any other?) and then advertise/use/improve it.
26 ** Improve VC: yes, there's a lot of work to be done there :-(
27 And most of it could/should make it into Emacs-23.3.
28
29 ** Random things that cross my mind right now that I'd like to see (some of
30 them from my local hacks), but it's not obvious at all whether they'll
31 make it.
32 *** multiple inheritance for keymaps (to get rid of the
33 fix_submap_inheritance hack and to more cleanly express the
34 relationship between minibuffer-local-*-map): I've had this locally
35 for a long time, but the details of the semantics is somewhat ... delicate.
36 *** prog-mode could/should provide a better fill-paragraph default
37 that uses syntax-tables to recognize string/comment boundaries.
38 *** provide more completion-at-point-functions. Make existing
39 in-buffer completion use completion-at-point.
40 *** "functional" function-key-map that would make it easy to add (and
41 remove) mappings like "FOO-mouse-4 -> FOO-scroll-down",
42 "FOO-tab -> ?\FOO-\t", "uppercase -> lowercase", "[fringe KEY...] ->
43 [KEY]", "H-FOO -> M-FOO", "C-x C-y FOO -> H-FOO", ...
44
45
46 * Simple tasks. These don't require much Emacs knowledge, they are
47 suitable for anyone from beginners to experts.
48
49 ** Convert modes that use view-mode to be derived from special-mode instead.
50
51 ** Major modes should have a menu entry. Examples of modes that do
52 not have one at the moment and probably should: text-mode, inferior-lisp-mode.
53
54 ** Check if all items on the mode-line have a suitable tooltip for all modes.
55
56 ** edebug and debugger-mode should have a toolbar.
57 It can use the same icons as gud.
58
59 ** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
60 to use it.
61
62 ** Convert all defvars with leading `*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
63 of appropriate :type and :group.
64
65 ** Remove any leading `*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
66
67 ** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
68 This needs a bit of care, since often people have become used to
69 expecting such variables to always be defined, eg when they modify
70 things in their .emacs.
71
72 ** See if other files can use generated-autoload-file (see eg ps-print).
73
74 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
75
76 ** Flymake's customization mechanism needs to be both simpler (fewer
77 levels of indirection) and better documented, so it is easier to
78 understand. I find it quite hard to figure out what compilation
79 command it will use.
80
81 I suggest totally rewriting that part of Flymake, using the simplest
82 mechanism that sufficies for the specific needs. That will be easy
83 for users to customize.
84
85 ** Compute the list of active keymaps *after* reading the first event.
86
87 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
88 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
89
90 ** buffer-offer-save should be a permanent local.
91
92 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
93 For related problems consult the thread starting with
94 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01346.html
95
96 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
97
98 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
99 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
100 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
101 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
102 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
103
104 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
105 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
106 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
107
108 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
109 a specified time).
110
111 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
112 variables whose values are currently hidden.
113
114 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
115 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
116 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
117 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
118
119 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
120
121 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
122 using a heuristic of some kind?
123
124 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
125 See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
126
127 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
128 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
129 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
130 without menu and tool bar lines.
131
132 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
133 and they should create Custom buffers.
134
135 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
136
137 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
138
139 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
140 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
141 recording which file the latest definition came from.
142
143 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
144
145 ** Consider improving src/sysdep.c's search for a fqdn.
146 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00782.html
147
148 ** Find a proper fix for rcirc multiline nick adding.
149 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00684.html
150
151 ** Implement `network-interface-list' and `network-interface-info'
152 on MS-Windows. Hint: the information is present in the Registry,
153 under the keys
154 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Linkage\
155 and
156 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<device>\
157 where <device> is the network device found under the first key.
158
159 ** Check for any included packages that define obsolete bug-reporting commands.
160 Change them to use report-emacs-bug.
161
162 ** Allow fringe indicators to display a tooltip (provide a help-echo property?)
163
164 ** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
165 like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
166
167 ** `dired-mode' should specify the semantics of `buffer-modified-p' for
168 dired buffers and DTRT WRT `auto-revert-mode'.
169
170 ** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
171 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
172
173 * Important features:
174 ** Extended text-properties (to make overlays "obsolete")
175 *** Several text-property planes
176 This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
177 get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
178 simply use the `face' property in the `font-lock' plane.
179 Each property would come with an Elisp merge-function. The merge
180 would be performed in add-text-properties.
181 *** zero-width text-properties.
182 ** Having tabs above a window to switch buffers in it.
183
184 ** "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations. We have
185 had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
186 beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
187 advantage of them. Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.
188
189 Perspectives work well even if you do the equivalent of C-x 4 C-f
190 because of the distinction between view windows vs file windows. In
191 Emacs this is more or less the "dedicated window" feature, but we have
192 never really made it work for this.
193
194 Perspectives also need to interact with the tabs.
195
196 ** Imenu could be extended into a file-structure browsing mechanism
197 using code like that of customize-groups.
198
199 ** Display something in the margin on lines that have compilation errors.
200
201 ** Compilation error navigation bar, parallel to the scroll bar,
202 indicating where in the buffer there are compilation errors.
203 Perhaps we could arrange to display these error indications on top
204 of the scroll bar itself. That depends on to what extent toolkit
205 scroll bars are extensible.
206
207 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
208 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
209 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
210
211 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
212
213 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
214
215 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
216 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
217 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
218 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
219 very early stages.
220
221 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
222 properly with variable-pitch faces.
223
224 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
225 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
226 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
227
228 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
229 (see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/clustering/chi04.pdf).
230
231 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
232 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
233 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
234 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
235 same value of this property.
236 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
237
238 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
239
240 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
241 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
242
243 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
244
245 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
246 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
247 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
248
249 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
250 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
251
252 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
253 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
254 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
255 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
256 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
257 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
258 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
259 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
260 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
261
262 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
263 be only full columns/lines.
264
265 * Other features we would like:
266
267 ** Make longlines-mode wrap lines based on screen position instead
268 of character position, so that variable-width fonts can be handled
269 properly.
270
271 ** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
272 from the emacsclient process.
273 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
274 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
275
276 ** Create a category of errors called `user-error' for errors which are
277 typically due to pilot errors and should thus be in debug-ignored-errors.
278
279 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
280
281 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
282 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
283
284 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
285 and put some other errors under it.
286
287 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
288 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
289
290 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
291
292 ** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
293
294 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
295 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
296 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
297 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
298 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
299
300 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
301 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
302 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
303 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
304 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
305 customization buffers.
306
307 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
308 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
309 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
310 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
311 use to view the advice.
312
313 ** Add a function to get the insertion-type of the markers in an overlay.
314
315 ** ange-ftp
316 *** understand sftp
317 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status messages.
318
319 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
320
321 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
322 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
323 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
324 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
325
326 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
327 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
328 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
329 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
330 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
331 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
332 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
333 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
334 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
335
336 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
337
338 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
339 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
340 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
341
342 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
343 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
344 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
345 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
346
347 ** Switch the Windows port to using Unicode keyboard input (maybe).
348 Based on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633586.aspx,
349 this boils down to (1) calling RegisterClassW function to register
350 Emacs windows, and (2) modifying ALL system messages to use Unicode.
351 In particular, WM_CHAR messages, which result from keyboard input,
352 will then come in encoded in UTF-16.
353
354 One advantage of switching to Unicode is to toss encoded-kbd usage,
355 which will solve the problem with binding non-ASCII keys with modifiers.
356
357 Problem: using this on Windows 9x/ME requires installing the
358 Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU), which might not implement all
359 the required functionality that is available built-in on Windows XP
360 and later. We should not make this change if it would pressure
361 users of unauthorized copies of older versions of Windows to
362 downgrade to versions that require activation.
363
364 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
365 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
366 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
367 where one language is embedded in another language. See
368 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
369 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches taken by others.
370
371 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
372 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
373 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
374
375 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
376 output to a different filter.
377
378 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
379 useful sense).
380
381 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops.
382
383 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
384
385 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
386 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
387
388 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
389 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
390 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
391 when the user tries to use the menubar.
392
393 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
394 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
395 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
396 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
397
398 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
399 significant work), PSGML, _possibly_ ECB.
400 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg01493.html
401 Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
402 have been missed.
403
404 ** Possibly install python-mode in place of python.el, or combine the two.
405 Someone needs to do the work of figuring out who all the non-trivial
406 python-mode.el contributors are and getting assignments.
407 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02156.html
408 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02201.html
409 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02489.html
410 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02234.html
411
412 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
413 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
414 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
415 what else ?
416
417 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
418 an example how to do part of this; see the XMenu* functions on msdos.c.
419
420 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
421 macros in cl-macs.
422
423 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
424 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
425 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
426
427 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
428 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
429
430 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
431 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
432 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
433
434 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
435 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
436 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
437
438 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
439
440 ** Split out parts of lisp.h [and generate Makefile dependencies automatically.]
441 [the last bit is done, see DEPFLAGS etc in src/Makefile.in ]
442
443 ** Update the FAQ.
444
445 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
446 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
447
448 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
449 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
450 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
451 [Do the existing -Q and -D cover this, or is more needed?]
452
453 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
454 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on this.]
455
456 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
457
458 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
459
460 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
461
462 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
463 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
464
465 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
466 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?). [does
467 doc-view.el do this, or could it be extended to do this?]
468
469 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
470 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
471 thought this was feasible.]
472
473 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
474 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
475 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
476
477 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
478 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
479 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
480 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
481 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
482 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
483 already for Emacs 23 and consult fx.]
484
485 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
486 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
487 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
488
489 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
490 encodings.
491
492 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
493
494 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
495 when the body only calls primitives.
496
497 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
498
499 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
500 colors of the applicable faces.
501
502 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
503
504 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
505 or the end of the buffer.
506
507 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
508 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
509 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
510
511 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
512 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
513 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
514 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after attributes.
515
516 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
517 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
518 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
519 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
520
521 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
522 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
523 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
524 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
525 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
526 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
527 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
528 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
529 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
530 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
531 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
532 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
533 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
534 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
535 probably in separate manual.
536
537 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
538 the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
539 with the color used for the transparent regions.)
540
541 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
542 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
543 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
544 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
545
546 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
547 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
548
549 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
550 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
551 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
552 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
553 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
554 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
555 and from the calls.
556
557 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
558 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
559
560 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
561 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
562 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
563 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
564 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
565
566 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
567 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
568 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
569 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
570 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
571 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
572 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
573 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
574 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
575
576 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
577 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
578 addition to ASCII.
579
580 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
581
582 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
583 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
584
585 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
586 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
587 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
588 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
589
590 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
591 but which can also be used as a modifier).
592
593 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
594 Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
595 lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
596
597 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
598 See thread
599 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
600 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
601
602 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
603 See thread
604 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
605
606 ** Possibly add a "close" button to the modeline.
607 The idea is to add an "X" of some kind, that when clicked deletes
608 the window associated with that modeline.
609 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02416.html
610
611 * Things to be done for specific packages or features
612
613 ** NeXTstep port
614
615 *** Bugs
616
617 **** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
618 up on top of all others
619
620 **** free_frame_resources, face colors
621
622 **** Numeric keysetting bug.
623
624 *** Mac-related
625
626 **** Open file:/// URLs.
627
628 **** Put frame autopositioning into C code somewhere -- if loc = same, offset.
629
630 **** Automap ctrl-mouse-1 to mouse-3.
631
632 **** Deal with Finder aliases somehow.
633
634 **** Ctrl-F2 won't pull up menus.
635
636 *** Other / Low Priority:
637
638 **** Better recognition of unicode scripts / Greek / composition.
639
640 **** Undo for color-drag face customization.
641
642 ** ImageMagick support
643
644 *** image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
645 ImageMagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
646 prefering the ImageMagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in jpegs.
647
648 Try (setq image-type-header-regexps nil) for a quick hack to prefer
649 ImageMagick over the jpg loader.
650
651 *** For some reason its unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
652 image bundle using the :index feature. The ImageMagick "display"
653 command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the Emacs
654 code. It seems ImageMagick tries to unpack every page when loading the
655 bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase in Emacs though.
656
657 ImageMagick 6.6.2-9 introduced a bugfix for single page djvu load. It
658 is now much faster to use the :index feature, but still not very fast.
659
660 *** Try to cache the num pages calculation. It can take a while to
661 calculate the number of pages, and if you need to do it for each page
662 view, page-flipping becomes uselessly slow.
663
664 *** Integrate with image-dired.
665
666 *** Integrate with docview.
667
668 *** Integrate with image-mode.
669 Some work has been done, e.g. M-x image-transform-fit-to-height will
670 fit the image to the height of the Emacs window.
671
672 *** Look for optimizations for handling images with low depth.
673 Currently the code seems to default to 24 bit RGB which is costly for
674 images with lower bit depth.
675
676 *** Decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
677 functions for image size etc.
678
679 *** Test with more systems.
680 Tested on Fedora 12, 14, and the libmagick that ships with it.
681 I also tried using an ImageMagick compiled from their SVN, in
682 parallel with the one packaged by Fedora, it worked well.
683 Ubuntu 8.04 was tested, but it seems it ships a broken ImageMagick.
684
685 ** nxml mode
686
687 *** High priority
688
689 **** Command to insert an element template, including all required
690 attributes and child elements. When there's a choice of elements
691 possible, we could insert a comment, and put an overlay on that
692 comment that makes it behave like a button with a pop-up menu to
693 select the appropriate choice.
694
695 **** Command to tag a region. With a schema should complete using legal
696 tags, but should work without a schema as well.
697
698 **** Provide a way to conveniently rename an element. With a schema should
699 complete using legal tags, but should work without a schema as well.
700
701 *** Outlining
702
703 **** Implement C-c C-o C-q.
704
705 **** Install pre/post command hook for moving out of invisible section.
706
707 **** Put a modify hook on invisible sections that expands them.
708
709 **** Integrate dumb folding somehow.
710
711 **** An element should be able to be its own heading.
712
713 **** Optimize to avoid complete buffer scan on each command.
714
715 **** Make it work with HTML-style headings (i.e. level indicated by
716 name of heading element rather than depth of section nesting).
717
718 **** Recognize root element as a section provided it has a title, even
719 if it doesn't match section-element-name-regex.
720
721 **** Support for incremental search automatically making hidden text visible.
722
723 **** Allow title to be an attribute.
724
725 **** Command that says to recognize the tag at point as a section/heading.
726
727 **** Explore better ways to determine when an element is a section
728 or a heading.
729
730 **** rng-next-error needs to either ignore invisible portion or reveal it
731 (maybe use isearch oriented text properties).
732
733 **** Errors within hidden section should be highlighted by underlining the
734 ellipsis.
735
736 **** Make indirect buffers work.
737
738 **** How should nxml-refresh outline recover from non well-formed tags?
739
740 **** Hide tags in title elements?
741
742 **** Use overlays instead of text properties for holding outline state?
743 Necessary for indirect buffers to work?
744
745 **** Allow an outline to go in the speedbar.
746
747 **** Split up outlining manual section into subsections.
748
749 **** More detail in the manual about each outlining command.
750
751 **** More menu entries for hiding/showing?
752
753 **** Indication of many lines have been hidden?
754
755 *** Locating schemas
756
757 **** Should rng-validate-mode give the user an opportunity to specify a
758 schema if there is currently none? Or should it at least give a hint
759 to the user how to specify a non-vacuous schema?
760
761 **** Support for adding new schemas to schema-locating files.
762 Add documentElement and namespace elements.
763
764 **** C-c C-w should be able to report current type id.
765
766 **** Implement doctypePublicId.
767
768 **** Implement typeIdBase.
769
770 **** Implement typeIdProcessingInstruction.
771
772 **** Support xml:base.
773
774 **** Implement group.
775
776 **** Find preferred prefix from schema-locating files. Get rid of
777 rng-preferred-prefix-alist.
778
779 **** Inserting document element with vacuous schema should complete using
780 document elements declared in schema locating files, and set schema
781 appropriately.
782
783 **** Add a ruleType attribute to the <include> element?
784
785 **** Allow processing instruction in prolog to contain the compact syntax
786 schema directly.
787
788 **** Use RDDL to locate a schema based on the namespace URI.
789
790 **** Should not prompt to add redundant association to schema locating file.
791
792 **** Command to reload current schema.
793
794 *** Schema-sensitive features
795
796 **** Should filter dynamic markup possibilities using schema validity, by
797 adding hook to nxml-mode.
798
799 **** Dynamic markup word should (at least optionally) be able to look in
800 other buffers that are using nxml-mode.
801
802 **** Should clicking on Invalid move to next error if already on an error?
803
804 **** Take advantage of a:documentation. Needs change to schema format.
805
806 **** Provide feasible validation (as in Jing) toggle.
807
808 **** Save the validation state as a property on the error overlay to enable
809 more detailed diagnosis.
810
811 **** Provide an Error Summary buffer showing all the validation errors.
812
813 **** Pop-up menu. What is useful? Tag a region (should be greyed out if
814 the region is not balanced). Suggestions based on error messages.
815
816 **** Have configurable list of namespace URIs so that we can provide
817 namespace URI completion on extension elements or with schema-less documents.
818
819 **** Allow validation to handle XInclude.
820
821 **** ID/IDREF support.
822
823 *** Completion
824
825 **** Make it work with icomplete. Only use a function to complete when
826 some of the possible names have undeclared namespaces.
827
828 **** How should C-return in mixed text work?
829
830 **** When there's a vacuous schema, C-return after < will insert the end-tag.
831 Is this a bug or a feature?
832
833 **** After completing start-tag, ensure we don't get unhelpful message
834 from validation
835
836 **** Syntax table for completion.
837
838 **** Should complete start-tag name with a space if namespace attributes
839 are required.
840
841 **** When completing start-tag name with no prefix and it doesn't match
842 should try to infer namespace from local name.
843
844 **** Should completion pay attention to characters after point? If so, how?
845
846 **** When completing start-tag name, add required atts if only one required
847 attribute.
848
849 **** When completing attribute name, add attribute value if only one value
850 is possible.
851
852 **** After attribute-value completion, insert space after close delimiter
853 if more attributes are required.
854
855 **** Complete on enumerated data values in elements.
856
857 **** When in context that allows only elements, should get tag
858 completion without having to type < first.
859
860 **** When immediately after start-tag name, and name is valid and not
861 prefix of any other name, should C-return complete on attribute names?
862
863 **** When completing attributes, more consistent to ignore all attributes
864 after point.
865
866 **** Inserting attribute value completions needs to be sensitive to what
867 delimiter is used so that it quotes the correct character.
868
869 **** Complete on encoding-names in XML decl.
870
871 **** Complete namespace declarations by searching for all namespaces
872 mentioned in the schema.
873
874 *** Well-formed XML support
875
876 **** Deal better with Mule-UCS
877
878 **** Deal with UTF-8 BOM when reading.
879
880 **** Complete entity names.
881
882 **** Provide some support for entity names for MathML.
883
884 **** Command to repeat the last tag.
885
886 **** Support for changing between character references and characters.
887 Need to check that context is one in which character references are
888 allowed. xmltok prolog parsing will need to distinguish parameter
889 literals from other kinds of literal.
890
891 **** Provide a comment command to bind to M-; that works better than the
892 normal one.
893
894 **** Make indenting in a multi-line comment work.
895
896 **** Structure view. Separate buffer displaying element tree.
897 Be able to navigate from structure view to document and vice-versa.
898
899 **** Flash matching >.
900
901 **** Smart selection command that selects increasingly large syntactically
902 coherent chunks of XML. If point is in an attribute value, first
903 select complete value; then if command is repeated, select value plus
904 delimiters, then select attribute name as well, then complete
905 start-tag, then complete element, then enclosing element, etc.
906
907 **** ispell integration.
908
909 **** Block-level items in mixed content should be indented, e.g:
910 <para>This is list:
911 <ul>
912 <li>item</li>
913
914 **** Provide option to indent like this:
915 <para>This is a paragraph
916 occupying multiple lines.</para>
917
918 **** Option to add make a / that closes a start-tag electrically insert a
919 space for the XHTML guys.
920
921 **** C-M-q should work.
922
923 *** Datatypes
924
925 **** Figure out workaround for CJK characters with regexps.
926
927 **** Does category C contain Cn?
928
929 **** Do ENTITY datatype properly.
930
931 *** XML Parsing Library
932
933 **** Parameter entity parsing option, nil (never), t (always),
934 unless-standalone (unless standalone="yes" in XML declaration).
935
936 **** When a file is currently being edited, there should be an option to
937 use its buffer instead of the on-disk copy.
938
939 *** Handling all XML features
940
941 **** Provide better support for editing external general parsed entities.
942 Perhaps provide a way to force ignoring undefined entities; maybe turn
943 this on automatically with <?xml encoding=""?> (with no version
944 pseudo-att).
945
946 **** Handle internal general entity declarations containing elements.
947
948 **** Handle external general entity declarations.
949
950 **** Handle default attribute declarations in internal subset.
951
952 **** Handle parameter entities (including DTD).
953
954 *** RELAX NG
955
956 **** Do complete schema checking, at least optionally.
957
958 **** Detect include/external loops during schema parse.
959
960 **** Coding system detection for schemas. Should use utf-8/utf-16 per the
961 spec. But also need to allow encodings other than UTF-8/16 to support
962 CJK charsets that Emacs cannot represent in Unicode.
963
964 *** Catching XML errors
965
966 **** Check public identifiers.
967
968 **** Check default attribute values.
969
970 *** Performance
971
972 **** Explore whether overlay-recenter can cure overlays performance problems.
973
974 **** Cache schemas. Need to have list of files and mtimes.
975
976 **** Make it possible to reduce rng-validate-chunk-size significantly,
977 perhaps to 500 bytes, without bad performance impact: don't do
978 redisplay on every chunk; pass continue functions on other uses of
979 rng-do-some-validation.
980
981 **** Cache after first tag.
982
983 **** Introduce a new name class that is a choice between names (so that
984 we can use member)
985
986 **** intern-choice should simplify after patterns with same 1st/2nd args
987
988 **** Large numbers of overlays slow things down dramatically. Represent
989 errors using text properties. This implies we cannot incrementally
990 keep track of the number of errors, in order to determine validity.
991 Instead, when validation completes, scan for any characters with an
992 error text property; this seems to be fast enough even with large
993 buffers. Problem with error at end of buffer, where there's no
994 character; need special variable for this. Need to merge face from
995 font-lock with the error face: use :inherit attribute with list of two
996 faces. How do we avoid making rng-valid depend on nxml-mode?
997
998 *** Error recovery
999
1000 **** Don't stop at newline in looking for close of start-tag.
1001
1002 **** Use indentation to guide recovery from mismatched end-tags
1003
1004 **** Don't keep parsing when currently not well-formed but previously
1005 well-formed
1006
1007 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag by popping an open element if
1008 there was a mismatched end-tag unaccounted for.
1009
1010 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag open on the hypothesis that there
1011 was an error in the namespace URI.
1012
1013 **** Better recovery from ill-formed XML declarations.
1014
1015 *** Useability improvements
1016
1017 **** Should print a "Parsing..." message during long movements.
1018
1019 **** Provide better position for reference to undefined pattern error.
1020
1021 **** Put Well-formed in the mode-line when validating against any-content.
1022
1023 **** Trim marking of illegal data for leading and trailing whitespace.
1024
1025 **** Show Invalid status as soon as we are sure it's invalid, rather than
1026 waiting for everything to be completely up to date.
1027
1028 **** When narrowed, Valid or Invalid status should probably consider only
1029 validity of narrowed region.
1030
1031 *** Bug fixes
1032
1033 **** Need to give an error for a document like: <foo/><![CDATA[ ]]>
1034
1035 **** Make nxml-forward-balanced-item work better for the prolog.
1036
1037 **** Make filling and indenting comments work in the prolog.
1038
1039 **** Should delete RNC Input buffers.
1040
1041 **** Figure out what regex use for NCName and use it consistently,
1042
1043 **** Should have not-well-formed tokens in ref.
1044
1045 **** Require version in XML declaration? Probably not because prevents
1046 use for external parsed entities. At least forbid standalone without version.
1047
1048 **** Reject schema that compiles to rng-not-allowed-ipattern.
1049
1050 **** Move point backwards on schema parse error so that it's on the right token.
1051
1052 *** Internal
1053
1054 **** Use rng-quote-string consistently.
1055
1056 **** Use parsing library for XML to texinfo conversion.
1057
1058 **** Rename xmltok.el to nxml-token.el. Use nxml-t- prefix instead of
1059 xmltok-. Change nxml-t-type to nxml-t-token-type, nxml-t-start to
1060 nxml-t-token-start.
1061
1062 **** Can we set fill-prefix to nil and rely on indenting?
1063
1064 **** xmltok should make available replacement text of entities containing
1065 elements
1066
1067 **** In rng-valid, instead of using modification-hooks and
1068 insert-behind-hooks on dependent overlays, use same technique as nxml-mode.
1069
1070 **** Port to XEmacs. Issues include: Unicode (XEmacs seems to be based on
1071 Mule-UCS); overlays/text properties vs extents; absence of
1072 fontification-functions hook.
1073
1074 *** Fontification
1075
1076 **** Allow face to depend on element qname, attribute qname, attribute
1077 value. Use list with pairs of (R . F), where R specifies regexps and
1078 F specifies faces. How can this list be made to depend on the document type?
1079
1080 *** Other
1081
1082 **** Support RELAX NG XML syntax (use XML parsing library).
1083
1084 **** Support W3C XML Schema (use XML parsing library).
1085
1086 **** Command to infer schema from current document (like trang).
1087
1088 *** Schemas
1089
1090 **** XSLT schema should take advantage of RELAX NG to express cooccurrence
1091 constraints on attributes (e.g. xsl:template).
1092
1093 *** Documentation
1094
1095 **** Move material from README to manual.
1096
1097 **** Document encodings.
1098
1099 *** Notes
1100
1101 **** How can we allow an error to be displayed on a different token from
1102 where it is detected? In particular, for a missing closing ">" we
1103 will need to display it at the beginning of the following token. At the
1104 moment, when we parse the following token the error overlay will get cleared.
1105
1106 **** How should rng-goto-next-error deal with narrowing?
1107
1108 **** Perhaps should merge errors having same start position even if they
1109 have different ends.
1110
1111 **** How to handle surrogates? One possibility is to be compatible with
1112 utf8.e: represent as sequence of 4 chars. But utf-16 is incompatible
1113 with this.
1114
1115 **** Should we distinguish well-formedness errors from invalidity errors?
1116 (I think not: we may want to recover from a bad start-tag by implying
1117 an end-tag.)
1118
1119 **** Seems to be a bug with Emacs, where a mouse movement that causes
1120 help-echo text to appear counts as pending input but does not cause
1121 idle timer to be restarted.
1122
1123 **** Use XML to represent this file.
1124
1125 **** I had a TODO which said simply "split-string". What did I mean?
1126
1127 **** Investigate performance on large files all on one line.
1128
1129 *** Issues for Emacs versions >= 22
1130
1131 **** Take advantage of UTF-8 CJK support.
1132
1133 **** Supply a next-error-function.
1134
1135 **** Investigate this NEWS item "Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding
1136 systems for HTML/XML files automatically."
1137
1138 **** Take advantage of the pointer text property.
1139
1140 **** Leverage char-displayable-p.
1141
1142 * Internal changes
1143
1144 ** Cleanup all the GC_ mark bit stuff -- there is no longer any distinction
1145 since the mark bit is no longer stored in the Lisp_Object itself.
1146
1147 ** Refine the `predicate' arg to read-file-name.
1148 Currently, it mixes up the predicate to apply when doing completion and the
1149 one to use when terminating the selection.
1150
1151 ** Merge ibuffer.el and buff-menu.el.
1152 More specifically do what's needed to make ibuffer.el the default,
1153 or just an extension of buff-menu.el.
1154
1155 ** Use pcomplete by default in shell-mode.
1156 This means to make it behave (by default) more like the current code.
1157 Use it also for read-shell-command, M-x compile, ...
1158
1159 ** Merge sendmail.el and messages.el.
1160 Probably not a complete merge, but at least arrange for messages.el to be
1161 a derived mode of sendmail.el. Or arrange for messages.el to be split
1162 into a small core and "the rest" so that we use less resources as long as
1163 we stick to the features provided in sendmail.el.
1164
1165 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
1166 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
1167 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
1168 this.]
1169
1170 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
1171
1172 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
1173 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
1174 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
1175 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
1176 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
1177
1178 ** Make SYNC_INPUT the default. [true since 2008-03-11]
1179 All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
1180 C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
1181 switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
1182 allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
1183 data munging.
1184
1185 ** Add "link" button class
1186 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
1187 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
1188 class to the standard "link" face.
1189
1190 * Other known bugs:
1191
1192 ** `make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
1193
1194 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
1195 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
1196
1197 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
1198 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
1199
1200 \f
1201 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1202
1203 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1204 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1205 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1206 (at your option) any later version.
1207
1208 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1209 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1210 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1211 GNU General Public License for more details.
1212
1213 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1214 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1215