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e39fc314 1 -*-text-*-
19cc91fb 2
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3If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we
4appreciate your help; please write to emacs-devel@gnu.org so we can be
5aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do
7bea57c9 6it best. Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be
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7prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work
8to the FSF.
9
10Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
a9c1a157 11
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12* Make compile.el record the markers that point to error loci
13 on text properties in the error message lines.
14
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15* Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
16 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
17 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user. It
18 ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
19 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
20
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21Important features:
22
5e101746 23* Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
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24 display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at multilingual
25 font selection for Emacs 22.]
5e101746 26
00a18b59 27* Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
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28 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
29 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.]
6165b6e3 30
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31* Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
32 probably needs some primitive support.
33
34* Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
35 properly with variable-pitch faces.
36
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37* Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
38 C-v to scroll through a tall image.
a9c1a157 39
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40* Implement other text formatting properties.
41** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
42** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
43 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
44 same value of this property.
45** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
46
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47* Make movemail work with IMAP.
48
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49* Internationalize Emacs's messages. [Note that this is of limited
50 use until the menus can display multilingual text. It also doesn't
51 address important issues like using the names of symbols essentially
52 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom. -- fx]
a9c1a157 53
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54* Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
55 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
56 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
57 pixels. Note that the relevant Xlib functions assume a specific
58 locale; that isn't good enough even if X can render the arbitrary
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59 text, which it often can't as far as I can tell. -- fx] [The gtk
60 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
61 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
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62
63* Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
64 be only full columns/lines.
65
66Other features we would like:
67
68* Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
69 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
70 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
6165b6e3 71
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72* Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
73 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
74 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
75 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
76
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77* Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
78 different parts of a buffer.
79
80* Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
81 output to a different filter.
82
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83* Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
84 useful sense).
85
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86* Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
87 desktops.
88
a933dad1 89* Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
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90 which gives the same information through a menu structure. [Dave
91 Love started on this.]
a933dad1 92
e39fc314 93* Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
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94 GNU Privacy Guard for encryption. [Code exists but isn't assigned.
95 See the Gnus development sources for assigned code concerning GPG
96 use with mail, which is probably a good start.]
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97
98* Save undo information in files, and reload it when needed
99 for undoing.
100
7665519d 101* Merge the Emacs regex.c with the Glibc regex.c.
bf6394a6 102 They split off a few years ago through negligence.
7665519d 103
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104* Change the Windows NT menu code
105 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
106 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
107 when the user tries to use the menubar.
108
109 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
110 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
0245b3ef 111 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
a933dad1 112 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
d054101f 113
e39fc314 114* Get some major packages installed: W3/url (development version needs
2794f7ab 115 significant work), PSGML. Check the assignments file for other
a52ce7f8 116 packages which might go in and have been missed.
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117
118* Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
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119 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
120 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
121 what else ?
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122
123* Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
124 an example how to do part of this.
125
126* Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
127 macros in cl-macs.
128
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129* Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
130 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
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131
132* Support simultaneous tty and X frames.
133
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134* Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
135 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
136 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
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137
138* Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
139 mismatches that we get with proprietary compilers on various systems.
140 They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
141
142* Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
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143
144* Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
145 automatically.
146
147* Update the FAQ.
148
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149* Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
150 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
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151
152* Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
153 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
154 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
155
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156* Investigate using the language environment (or locale?) to set up
157 more things, such as the default Ispell dictionary, calendar
6147334f 158 holidays, quoting characters?,...
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159
160* Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
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161 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on
162 this.]
19cc91fb 163
4dd4cc14 164* Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
e2849090 165
03ff8aab 166* Add horizontal scroll bars.
00a18b59 167
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168* Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
169 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
c0460c17 170
bf6394a6 171* Make the Custom themes support do useful things.
3a84ed60 172
8d57a345 173* Investigate using GNU Lightning or similar system for incremental
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174 compilation of selected bytecode functions to subrs. Converting CCL
175 programs to native code is probably the first thing to try, though.
b14b5f08 176
177c0ea7 177* Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
296808a5 178 Emacs.
6add099c 179
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180* Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
181 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
182
183* Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
184 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
185 thought this was feasible.]
186
187* Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
188 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
189 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
190
191* Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
192 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
193 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
194 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
195 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
196 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
197 already for Emacs 22 and consult fx.]
198
199* Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
200 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
201 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
202
203* Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
204 encodings.
205
206* Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
207
208* Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
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209 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
210 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
211 this.]
d1c3f6b6 212
6add099c 213* Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
e641b454 214
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215* Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
216 colors of the applicable faces.
217
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218* Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
219 XRender/Freetype.
c5020b5b 220
d1c3f6b6 221* Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
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222
223* Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
224 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs.
225
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226* Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
227 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
228 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
229 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
230 attributes.
231
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232* Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
233 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
234 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
235 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
236
237 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
238 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
657c5358 239 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
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240 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
241 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
242 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
243 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
244 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
245 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
246 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
247 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
248 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
249 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
250 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
251 probably in separate manual.
758830ba 252
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253* Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
254 the XPMs so that the colour versions work generally. (Requires care
255 with the colour used for the transparent regions.)
256
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257* Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
258 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
259 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
260 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
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261
262* Fix skip-chars-{for,back}ward to allow character classes.
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263
264* (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
265 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
266
267* Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
268 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
269 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
270 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
271 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
272 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
273 and from the calls.
274
275;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036