- -*-text-*-
+ -*-outline-*-
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
+it best. Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, 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:
+* 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.
+** buffer-offer-save should be a permanent local.
-* Make compile.el record the markers that point to error loci
- on text properties in the error message lines.
+** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
-Important features:
+** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
-* 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.
+** Make occur correctly handle matches that span more than one line,
+ as well as overlapping matches.
-* Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
- display a font as a sample, etc.
+** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
+ invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
+ the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
+ It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
+ text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
-* Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
- decent single definition of RTF?]
+** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
+ It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
+ should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
-* Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
+** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
+ variables whose values are currently hidden.
+
+** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
+ specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
+ See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
+ <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
+
+** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
+
+** Make occur handle multi-line matches cleanly with context.
+
+** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
+ using a heuristic of some kind?
+
+** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
+ See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
+
+** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
+ make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
+ tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
+ without menu and tool bar lines.
+
+** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
+ and they should create Custom buffers.
+
+** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
+
+** Modify allout.el to use overlays, like outline.el.
+
+** M-! M-n should fetch the buffer-file-name as the default.
+
+** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
+ with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
+ recording which file the latest definition came from.
+
+* Important features:
+
+** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
+ list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
+ multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
+
+** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
+
+** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
+ decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
+ http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
+ by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
+ very early stages.
+
+** Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
probably needs some primitive support.
-* Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
+** Add a command to make a "Local Variables" section in the current buffer
+ and/or add a variable to the list.
+
+** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
properly with variable-pitch faces.
-* Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility.
+** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
+ C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
+ posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
+
+** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
+ (see http://graphics.csail.mit.edu/~rcm/chi04.pdf).
-* 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".
+** 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.
+*** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
+
+** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
-* Make movemail work with IMAP.
+** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
-* Internationalize Emacs's messages.
+** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
+ so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
+ This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
-* Port Emacs to GTK+. (Relevant work has been done already.)
+** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
+ as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
-* Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text.
+** 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. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
+ enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
+ port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
+ Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
+ Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
+ enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
-* Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
+** 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].
+* Other features we would like:
+
+** Create a category of errors called `user-error' for errors which are
+typically due to pilot errors and should thus be in debug-ignored-errors.
+
+** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
-* Set fringe widths per-window/per-buffer.
+** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
+ for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
-* Make fringe bitmaps user configurable. Maybe add ability to add
- additional bitmaps to the fringe from lisp.
+** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
+ and put some other errors under it.
-Other features we would like:
+** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
+ See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
-* Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
+** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
+
+** A function to check for customizable options that have been
+ set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
+ This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
+ to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
+ in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
+
+** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
+ function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like "
+ [Function has advice]". It might look like
+ (defun foo [Function has advice] (x y)
+ The overlay could also be a button that you could use to view the advice.
+
+** ange-ftp
+*** understand sftp
+ This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status
+ messages.
+
+*** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
+
+** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
+ E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
+ M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
+ H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
+
+** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
+*** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
+*** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
+*** support for infix operators (with precedence).
+*** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
+*** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
+ by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
+ at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
+*** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
+
+** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
+
+** 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)
+** 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.
+** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
+ different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
+ Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
+ where one language is embedded in another language. See
+ http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
+ mmm-mode, as reference for approaches took by others.
-* Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
+** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
+ immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
+ input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
+
+** 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
+** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
useful sense).
-* Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
+** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
desktops.
-* Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
+** 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.]
+** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
-* Save undo information in files, and reload it when needed
- for undoing.
+** Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
+ 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.] See also
+ http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/auto-crypt.tgz.
-* Merge the Emacs regex.c with the Glibc regex.c.
- They split off a few years ago through negligance.
+** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
+ when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
-* Change the Windows NT menu code
+** 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.
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. Check the assignments file for other
+** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
+ 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
+** 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
+** 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
+** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
macros in cl-macs.
-* Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
+** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
+ smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
+ compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
+
+** 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.
+** Support simultaneous tty and X frames. [See the multi-tty branch of Emacs
+ at http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.]
-* 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.
- They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
+** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
+ mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and 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.
+** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
-* Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
+** Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
automatically.
-* Update the FAQ.
+** Update the FAQ.
-* Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
+** 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
+** 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.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on
+ this.]
-* 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.
-* Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
+** Add horizontal scroll bars.
-* Implement some variety of (non-gtk) drag-and-drop support under X.
- Using libdnd might be a good start.
+** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
+ size and its position from lines instead of characters.
-* Add horizontal scroll bars.
+** Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
+ Emacs.
-* Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
- size and its position from lines instead of characters.
+** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
+ converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
-* Integrate Vroonhof's Custom themes code and make it do useful
- things. [The integration is partly done.]
+** 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.]
-* Adapt the gnuserv/gnudoit features for server/emacsclient.
+** 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.
-* 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.
+** 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.]
-* Add a feature to Info similar to "info --apropos SUBJECT".
+** 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.
-* If you do an insert-file and that file is currently modified in
- another buffer but not written yet, print a warning.
+** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
+ encodings.
-* Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
- Emacs.
+** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
-* Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
+** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
+when the body only calls primitives.
-* Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
- XRender/Freetype.
+** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
-* Rewrite make-docfile to something sane.
+** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
+ colors of the applicable faces.
-* Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
- to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs.
+** Face remapping.
-* Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
+** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
+ or the end of the buffer.
+
+** Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
+ XRender/Freetype.
+
+** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
+ to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
+ that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
+
+** 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
+** 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.
cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
probably in separate manual.
+
+** 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'.
+
+** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
+ i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
+
+** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
+ `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
+ Whenever possible, use value 'string.
+ When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
+ If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
+ the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
+ and from the calls.
+
+** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
+ only the variable `current-language-environment'.
+
+** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
+ better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
+ environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
+ are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
+ better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
+
+** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
+ orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
+ to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
+ dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
+ characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
+ sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
+ directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
+ common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
+ needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
+
+** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
+ Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
+ addition to ASCII.
+
+** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
+
+** OpenType font support for various complex scripts (e.g. Devanagari).
+ As X protocal doesn't provide a way to access OpenType Layout Tables
+ in a OpenType font of a server side, we need a way to utilize local
+ fonts (perhaps by directly using the Freetype library or indirectly
+ via Xft library).
+
+** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
+ space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
+
+** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
+ in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
+ "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
+ packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
+
+** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
+but which can also be used as a modifier).
+
+** Provide the toolbar on ttys. This could map a bit like tmm-menubar
+ for the menubar and buttons could look a bit like those used by customize.
+
+** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
+ Info, but also with regard to namespace), add a forward button to make the
+ Help buffer more browser like and gives the value of lisp expressions
+ e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face. [nickrob@snap.net.nz has a patch
+ for this for inclusion after 22.1].
+
+** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
+ See thread
+ <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
+ [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
+
+* Internal changes
+
+** 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.]
+
+** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
+
+** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
+ offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
+ comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
+ For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
+ haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
+
+** Make SYNC_INPUT the default.
+ All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
+ C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
+ switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
+ allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
+ data munging.
+
+* Other known bugs:
+
+** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
+not be noticed if it appears within a word.
+
+** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
+ sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
+
+;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036