-*-text-*- If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we appreciate your help; please write to emacs-devel@gnu.org so we can be aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do it best. Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted packages, please be prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work to the FSF. Small but important fixes needed in existing features: * Bring back the feature of showing the part of the buffer that is a problem for the use of the preferred coding systems. * Make compile.el record the markers that point to error loci on text properties in the error message lines. Important features: * Write an INTRO_CVS file with basic instructions how to build emacs from CVS (make bootstrap), some information on how the config and build system is tied together, and all sorts of tips and tricks (FAQ) which may be of interest to new (and old) emacs hackers. * Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families, display a font as a sample, etc. * Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a decent single definition of RTF?] * Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This probably needs some primitive support. * Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling properly with variable-pitch faces. * Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility. * Implement other text formatting properties. ** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page. ** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this". Don't break the line between two characters that have the same value of this property. ** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line. * Make movemail work with IMAP. * Internationalize Emacs's messages. * Port Emacs to GTK+. (Relevant work has been done already.) * Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. * Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can be only full columns/lines. * Move fringe to be displayed between display margins and text area. [KFS is looking into this]. * Set fringe widths per-window/per-buffer. * Make fringe bitmaps user configurable. Maybe add ability to add additional bitmaps to the fringe from lisp. Other features we would like: * Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command. It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes. * Implement a clean way to use different major modes for different parts of a buffer. * Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error output to a different filter. * Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some useful sense). * Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops. * Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file which gives the same information through a menu structure. [Dave Love started on this.] * Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with GNU Privacy Guard for encryption. [Code exists but isn't assigned.] * Save undo information in files, and reload it when needed for undoing. * Merge the Emacs regex.c with the Glibc regex.c. They split off a few years ago through negligance. * Change the Windows NT menu code so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except when the user tries to use the menubar. This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to the main thread, and not return from that message until the main thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages. * Get some major packages installed: W3/url (development version needs significant work), PSGML, Mule-UCS, Tramp (?). Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and have been missed. * Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ? multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ? what else ? * Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as an example how to do part of this. * Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler macros in cl-macs. * Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). * Support simultaneous tty and X frames. * Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. * Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char mismatches that we get with proprietary compilers on various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important warnings. * Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC. * Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies automatically. * Update the FAQ. * Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available. [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.] * Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration. * Investigate using the language environment (or locale?) to set up more things, such as the default Ispell dictionary, calendar holidays, quoting characters?,... * Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use the Boehm collector.) * Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3. * Implement some variety of (non-gtk) drag-and-drop support under X. Using libdnd might be a good start. * Add horizontal scroll bars. * Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's size and its position from lines instead of characters. * Integrate Vroonhof's Custom themes code and make it do useful things. [The integration is partly done.] * Adapt the gnuserv/gnudoit features for server/emacsclient. * Re-implement emacs-server in lisp as an internal server using make-network-process instead of using an external program. * Investigate using GNU Lightning or similar system for incremental compilation of selected bytecode functions to subrs. Converting CCL programs to native code is probably the first thing to try, though. * Add a feature to Info similar to "info --apropos SUBJECT". * If you do an insert-file and that file is currently modified in another buffer but not written yet, print a warning. * Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to Emacs. * Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display. * Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using XRender/Freetype. * Rewrite make-docfile to something sane. * Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. * Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after attributes. * Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases). This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting. Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout, artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme, completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head, easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist], generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node], mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile, snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break, vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed, swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext, refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline, cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml, cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes, probably in separate manual.