3 If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we
4 appreciate your help; please write to emacs-devel@gnu.org so we can be
5 aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do
6 it best. Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be
7 prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work
10 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
12 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
13 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
14 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user. It
15 ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
16 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
18 ** battery.el display-battery should be replaced with a minor mode.
20 ** Redefine define-generic-mode as a macro, so the compiler
21 sees the definitions it generates.
23 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
24 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
25 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
27 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
28 variables whose values are currently hidden.
32 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
33 display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at multilingual
34 font selection for Emacs 22.]
36 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
37 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
38 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.]
40 ** Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
41 probably needs some primitive support.
43 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
44 properly with variable-pitch faces.
46 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
47 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
48 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
50 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
51 (see http://graphics.csail.mit.edu/~rcm/chi04.pdf).
53 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
54 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
55 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
56 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
57 same value of this property.
58 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
60 ** Make movemail work with IMAP.
62 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages. [Note that this is of limited
63 use until the menus can display multilingual text. It also doesn't
64 address important issues like using the names of symbols essentially
65 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom. -- fx]
67 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
68 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
69 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
70 pixels. Note that the relevant Xlib functions assume a specific
71 locale; that isn't good enough even if X can render the arbitrary
72 text, which it often can't as far as I can tell. -- fx] [The gtk
73 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
74 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
76 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
77 be only full columns/lines.
79 * Other features we would like:
81 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
82 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
83 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
84 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
85 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
89 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
91 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
92 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
93 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
94 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
96 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
97 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
98 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
99 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
100 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
101 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
102 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
103 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
104 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
106 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
108 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
109 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
110 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
112 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
113 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
114 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
115 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
117 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
118 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
119 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
120 where one language is embedded in another language.
122 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
123 output to a different filter.
125 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
128 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
131 ** Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
132 which gives the same information through a menu structure. [Dave
133 Love started on this.]
135 ** Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
136 GNU Privacy Guard for encryption. [Code exists but isn't assigned.
137 See the Gnus development sources for assigned code concerning GPG
138 use with mail, which is probably a good start.]
140 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
141 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
143 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
144 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
145 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
146 when the user tries to use the menubar.
148 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
149 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
150 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
151 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
153 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
154 significant work), PSGML. Check the assignments file for other
155 packages which might go in and have been missed.
157 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
158 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
159 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
162 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
163 an example how to do part of this.
165 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
168 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
169 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
170 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
172 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
173 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
175 ** Support simultaneous tty and X frames.
177 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
178 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
179 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
181 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
182 mismatches that we get with proprietary compilers on various systems.
183 They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
185 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
187 ** Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
192 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
193 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
195 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
196 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
197 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
199 ** Investigate using the language environment (or locale?) to set up
200 more things, such as the default Ispell dictionary, calendar
201 holidays, quoting characters?,...
203 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
204 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on
207 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
209 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
211 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
212 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
214 ** Make the Custom themes support do useful things.
216 ** Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
219 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
220 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
222 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
223 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
224 thought this was feasible.]
226 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
227 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
228 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
230 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
231 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
232 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
233 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
234 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
235 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
236 already for Emacs 22 and consult fx.]
238 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
239 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
240 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
242 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
245 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
247 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
249 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
250 colors of the applicable faces.
252 ** Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
255 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
256 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs.
258 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
259 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
260 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
261 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
264 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
265 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
266 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
267 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
269 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
270 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
271 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
272 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
273 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
274 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
275 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
276 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
277 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
278 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
279 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
280 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
281 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
282 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
283 probably in separate manual.
285 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
286 the XPMs so that the colour versions work generally. (Requires care
287 with the colour used for the transparent regions.)
289 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
290 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
291 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
292 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
294 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
295 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
297 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
298 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
299 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
300 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
301 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
302 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
305 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
306 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
308 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
309 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
310 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
311 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
312 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
314 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
315 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
318 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
320 ** OpenType font support for various complex scripts (e.g. Devanagari).
321 As X protocal doesn't provide a way to access OpenType Layout Tables
322 in a OpenType font of a server side, we need a way to utilize local
323 fonts (perhaps by directly using the Freetype library or indirectly
326 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
327 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
329 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
330 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
331 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
332 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
334 ** Provide the toolbar on ttys. This could map a bit like tmm-menubar
335 for the menubar and buttons could look a bit like those used by customize.
339 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
340 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
341 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
344 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
346 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
347 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
348 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
349 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
350 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
352 ;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036