-*-text-*-
-* Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
- to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs.
+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:
-* Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF.
+* Make compile.el record the markers that point to error loci
+ on text properties in the error message lines.
+
+Important features:
+
+* Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
+ display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at multilingual
+ font selection for Emacs 22.]
+
+* 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, one that allows
+ C-v to scroll through a tall image.
* Implement other text formatting properties.
** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
same value of this property.
** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
-* Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
- probably needs some primitive support.
+* Make movemail work with IMAP.
+
+* Internationalize Emacs's messages. [Note that this is of limited
+ use until the menus can display multilingual text. It also doesn't
+ address important issues like using the names of symbols essentially
+ as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom. -- fx]
+
+* Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
+ probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
+ in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
+ pixels. Note that the relevant Xlib functions assume a specific
+ locale; that isn't good enough even if X can render the arbitrary
+ text, which it often can't as far as I can tell. -- fx]
+
+* 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.
+
+* Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
+ from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
+ user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
+ latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
* 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 compile.el record the markers that point to error loci
- on text properties in the error message lines.
-
* Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
useful sense).
-* Make movemail work with IMAP.
-
-* Add ANSI C prototype forward declarations to the source files,
- so that even the functions used within one file have prototypes.
+* 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.]
+ GNU Privacy Guard for encryption. [Code exists but isn't assigned.
+ See the Gnus development sources for assigned code concerning GPG
+ use with mail, which is probably a good start.]
* 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 negligence.
+
* Change the Windows NT menu code
so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
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
+ thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
-* Make Emacs work as a Java Bean.
-
-* Implement the design for Unicode-based internal encoding for Mule.
-
-* Document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
- ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases). Here's
- a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout, artist,
- ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme, completion,
- 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.
-
* 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.
+ significant work), PSGML. 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 ?
* Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
macros in cl-macs.
-* Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs).
+* Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
+ but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
* Support simultaneous tty and X frames.
-* Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
- properly with variable-pitch faces.
-
-* Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library.
+* Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
+ not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
+ this and can say where some of the problems are.]
* Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
mismatches that we get with proprietary compilers on various systems.
* Update the FAQ.
-* Support dynamically-loadable primitive support using libtool and
- support similarly to Guile. [Some work has been done.]
-
* Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
[It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
-* Investigate using the language environment to set up more things,
- such as the default Ispell dictionary.
+* 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.)
+ the Boehm collector.) [fx is working on this.]
-* Implement variable aliases, i.e. a `defvaralias' analogous to the
- `defalias' for functions. The implementation should not slow down
- Emacs, and it shouldn't use additional memory, at least not much.
+* Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
-* Port Emacs to GTK+. (Relevant work has been done already.)
+* Implement some variety of (non-gtk) drag-and-drop support under X.
+ Using libdnd might be a good start.
-* Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text.
+* Add horizontal scroll bars.
-* Implement, in C, a ``focus follows mouse'' mode that selects a window
- when the mouse enters it.
+* Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
+ size and its position from lines instead of characters.
-* Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
+* Make the Custom themes support do useful things.
-* Implement some variety of (non-gtk) drag-and-drop support under X.
- Using libdnd might be a good start.
+* 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.
-* Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
- be only full columns/lines.
+* Add a feature to Info similar to "info --apropos SUBJECT".
-* Add horizontal scroll bars.
+* Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
+ Emacs.
+
+* Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
+ converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
+
+* Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
+ e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
+ thought this was feasible.]
+
+* Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
+ (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
+ to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
+
+* Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
+ is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
+ define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
+ (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
+ box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
+ tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
+ already for Emacs 22 and consult fx.]
+
+* Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
+ to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
+ access in cases which need more than Lisp.
+
+* Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
+ encodings.
+
+* Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
+
+* Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
+ GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
+ that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
+ this.]
+
+* Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
+
+* Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
+ colors of the applicable faces.
+
+* Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
+ XRender/Freetype.
+
+* Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
+
+* 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.
+
+* Provide a means to extract image-relative coordinates from mouse
+ clicks on images. (Needed for W3, at least.) Also useful for W3
+ and Gnus: allow images to scroll properly.
+
+* Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
+ the XPMs so that the colour versions work generally. (Requires care
+ with the colour used for the transparent regions.)
+
+* Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
+ interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
+ list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
+ other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
+
+* Fix skip-chars-{for,back}ward to allow character classes.