Merge changes from emacs-23 branch
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / TODO
1 Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
2
3 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
4 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5 See the end of the file for license conditions.
6
7
8 If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we
9 appreciate your help; please write to emacs-devel@gnu.org so we can be
10 aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do
11 it best. Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be
12 prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work
13 to the FSF.
14
15 * Tentative plan for Emacs-24
16
17 ** Bidi
18 ** lexbind: I haven't checked the status of the code recently, so
19 I don't know how realistic it is to include it. But it's been around
20 for a long time, and I trust Miles, so I have hope.
21 ** concurrency: including it as an "experimental" compile-time option
22 sounds good. Of course there might still be big questions around
23 "which form of concurrency" we'll want.
24 ** Overhaul of customize: sounds wonderful.
25 ** some kind of color-theme: agreed.
26 ** better support for dynamic embedded graphics: I like this idea (my
27 mpc.el code could use it for the volume widget), tho I wonder if the
28 resulting efficiency will be sufficient.
29 ** Spread Semantic.
30 ** Improve the "code snippets" support: consolidate skeleton.el, tempo.el,
31 and expand.el (any other?) and then advertise/use/improve it.
32 ** Improve VC: yes, there's a lot of work to be done there :-(
33 And most of it could/should make it into Emacs-23.3.
34 ** package manager.
35
36 ** Random things that cross my mind right now that I'd like to see (some of
37 them from my local hacks), but it's not obvious at all whether they'll
38 make it.
39 *** multiple inheritance for keymaps (to get rid of the
40 fix_submap_inheritance hack and to more cleanly express the
41 relationship between minibuffer-local-*-map): I've had this locally
42 for a long time, but the details of the semantics is somewhat ... delicate.
43 *** Derive from prog-mode in more places, close bug#5532.
44 *** prog-mode could/should provide a better fill-paragraph default
45 that uses syntax-tables to recognize string/comment boundaries.
46 *** provide more completion-at-point-functions. Make existing
47 in-buffer completion use completion-at-point.
48 *** "functional" function-key-map that would make it easy to add (and
49 remove) mappings like "FOO-mouse-4 -> FOO-scroll-down",
50 "FOO-tab -> ?\FOO-\t", "uppercase -> lowercase", "[fringe KEY...] ->
51 [KEY]", "H-FOO -> M-FOO", "C-x C-y FOO -> H-FOO", ...
52
53
54 * Simple tasks. These don't require much Emacs knowledge, they are
55 suitable for anyone from beginners to experts.
56
57 ** Convert modes that use view-mode to be derived from special-mode instead.
58
59 ** Replace some uses of the preprocessor code in Makefile.in with the equivalent autoconf.
60
61 ** Major modes should have a menu entry. Examples of modes that do
62 not have one at the moment and probably should: text-mode, inferior-lisp-mode.
63
64 ** Check if all items on the mode-line have a suitable tooltip for all modes.
65
66 ** edebug and debugger-mode should have a toolbar.
67 It can use the same icons as gud.
68
69 ** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
70 to use it.
71
72 ** Convert all defvars with leading `*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
73 of appropriate :type and :group.
74
75 ** Remove any leading `*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
76
77 ** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
78 This needs a bit of care, since often people have become used to
79 expecting such variables to always be defined, eg when they modify
80 things in their .emacs.
81
82 ** See if other files can use generated-autoload-file (see eg ps-print).
83
84 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
85
86 ** Flymake's customization mechanism needs to be both simpler (fewer
87 levels of indirection) and better documented, so it is easier to
88 understand. I find it quite hard to figure out what compilation
89 command it will use.
90
91 I suggest totally rewriting that part of Flymake, using the simplest
92 mechanism that sufficies for the specific needs. That will be easy
93 for users to customize.
94
95 ** Compute the list of active keymaps *after* reading the first event.
96
97 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
98 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
99
100 ** buffer-offer-save should be a permanent local.
101
102 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
103 For related problems consult the thread starting with
104 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01346.html
105
106 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
107
108 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
109 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
110 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
111 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
112 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
113
114 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
115 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
116 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
117
118 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
119 a specified time).
120
121 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
122 variables whose values are currently hidden.
123
124 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
125 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
126 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
127 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
128
129 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
130
131 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
132 using a heuristic of some kind?
133
134 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
135 See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
136
137 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
138 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
139 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
140 without menu and tool bar lines.
141
142 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
143 and they should create Custom buffers.
144
145 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
146
147 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
148
149 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
150 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
151 recording which file the latest definition came from.
152
153 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
154
155 ** Consider improving src/sysdep.c's search for a fqdn.
156 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00782.html
157
158 ** Find a proper fix for rcirc multiline nick adding.
159 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00684.html
160
161 ** Implement `network-interface-list' and `network-interface-info'
162 on MS-Windows. Hint: the information is present in the Registry,
163 under the keys
164 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Linkage\
165 and
166 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<device>\
167 where <device> is the network device found under the first key.
168
169 ** Check for any included packages that define obsolete bug-reporting commands.
170 Change them to use report-emacs-bug.
171
172 ** Allow fringe indicators to display a tooltip (provide a help-echo property?)
173
174 ** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
175 like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
176
177 ** `dired-mode' should specify the semantics of `buffer-modified-p' for
178 dired buffers and DTRT WRT `auto-revert-mode'.
179
180 ** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
181 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
182
183 * Important features:
184 ** Extended text-properties (to make overlays "obsolete")
185 *** Several text-property planes
186 This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
187 get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
188 simply use the `face' property in the `font-lock' plane.
189 Each property would come with an Elisp merge-function. The merge
190 would be performed in add-text-properties.
191 *** zero-width text-properties.
192 ** Having tabs above a window to switch buffers in it.
193
194 ** "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations. We have
195 had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
196 beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
197 advantage of them. Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.
198
199 Perspectives work well even if you do the equivalent of C-x 4 C-f
200 because of the distinction between view windows vs file windows. In
201 Emacs this is more or less the "dedicated window" feature, but we have
202 never really made it work for this.
203
204 Perspectives also need to interact with the tabs.
205
206 ** Imenu could be extended into a file-structure browsing mechanism
207 using code like that of customize-groups.
208
209 ** Display something in the margin on lines that have compilation
210 errors.
211
212 ** Compilation error navigation bar, parallel to the scroll bar,
213 indicating where in the buffer there are compilation errors.
214 Perhaps we could arrange to display these error indications on top
215 of the scroll bar itself. That depends on to what extent toolkit
216 scroll bars are extensible.
217
218 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
219 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
220 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
221
222 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
223
224 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
225
226 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
227 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
228 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
229 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
230 very early stages.
231
232 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
233 properly with variable-pitch faces.
234
235 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
236 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
237 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
238
239 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
240 (see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/clustering/chi04.pdf).
241
242 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
243 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
244 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
245 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
246 same value of this property.
247 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
248
249 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
250
251 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
252 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
253
254 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
255
256 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
257 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
258 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
259
260 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
261 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
262
263 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
264 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
265 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
266 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
267 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
268 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
269 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
270 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
271 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
272
273 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
274 be only full columns/lines.
275
276 * Other features we would like:
277
278 ** Make longlines-mode wrap lines based on screen position instead
279 of character position, so that variable-width fonts can be handled
280 properly.
281
282 ** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
283 from the emacsclient process.
284 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
285 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
286
287 ** Create a category of errors called `user-error' for errors which are
288 typically due to pilot errors and should thus be in debug-ignored-errors.
289
290 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
291
292 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
293 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
294
295 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
296 and put some other errors under it.
297
298 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
299 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
300
301 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
302
303 ** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
304
305 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
306 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
307 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
308 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
309 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
310
311 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
312 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
313 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
314 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
315 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
316 customization buffers.
317
318 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
319 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
320 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
321 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
322 use to view the advice.
323
324 ** Add a function to get the insertion-type of the markers in an overlay.
325
326 ** ange-ftp
327 *** understand sftp
328 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status
329 messages.
330
331 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
332
333 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
334 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
335 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
336 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
337
338 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
339 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
340 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
341 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
342 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
343 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
344 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
345 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
346 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
347
348 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
349
350 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
351 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
352 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
353
354 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
355 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
356 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
357 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
358
359 ** Switch the Windows port to using Unicode keyboard input (maybe).
360 Based on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633586.aspx,
361 this boils down to (1) calling RegisterClassW function to register
362 Emacs windows, and (2) modifying ALL system messages to use Unicode.
363 In particular, WM_CHAR messages, which result from keyboard input,
364 will then come in encoded in UTF-16.
365
366 One advantage of switching to Unicode is to toss encoded-kbd usage,
367 which will solve the problem with binding non-ASCII keys with
368 modifiers.
369
370 Problem: using this on Windows 9x/ME requires installing the
371 Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU), which might not implement all
372 the required functionality that is available built-in on Windows XP
373 and later. We should not make this change if it would pressure
374 users of unauthorized copies of older versions of Windows to
375 downgrade to versions that require activation.
376
377 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
378 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
379 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
380 where one language is embedded in another language. See
381 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
382 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches taken by others.
383
384 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
385 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
386 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
387
388 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
389 output to a different filter.
390
391 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
392 useful sense).
393
394 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
395 desktops.
396
397 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
398
399 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
400 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
401
402 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
403 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
404 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
405 when the user tries to use the menubar.
406
407 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
408 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
409 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
410 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
411
412 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
413 significant work), PSGML, _possibly_ ECB.
414 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg01493.html
415 Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
416 have been missed.
417
418 ** Possibly install python-mode in place of python.el, or combine the two.
419 Someone needs to do the work of figuring out who all the non-trivial
420 python-mode.el contributors are and getting assignments.
421 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02156.html
422 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02201.html
423 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02489.html
424 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02234.html
425
426 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
427 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
428 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
429 what else ?
430
431 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
432 an example how to do part of this; see the XMenu* functions on msdos.c.
433
434 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
435 macros in cl-macs.
436
437 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
438 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
439 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
440
441 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
442 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
443
444 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
445 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
446 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
447
448 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
449 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
450 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important
451 warnings.
452
453 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
454
455 ** Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
456 automatically.
457
458 ** Update the FAQ.
459
460 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
461 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
462
463 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
464 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
465 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
466 [Do the existing -Q and -D cover this, or is more needed?]
467
468 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
469 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on
470 this.]
471
472 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
473
474 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
475
476 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
477
478 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
479 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
480
481 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
482 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?). [does
483 doc-view.el do this, or could it be extended to do this?]
484
485 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
486 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
487 thought this was feasible.]
488
489 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
490 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
491 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
492
493 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
494 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
495 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
496 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
497 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
498 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
499 already for Emacs 23 and consult fx.]
500
501 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
502 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
503 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
504
505 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
506 encodings.
507
508 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
509
510 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
511 when the body only calls primitives.
512
513 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
514
515 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
516 colors of the applicable faces.
517
518 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
519
520 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
521 or the end of the buffer.
522
523 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
524 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
525 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
526
527 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
528 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
529 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
530 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
531 attributes.
532
533 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
534 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
535 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
536 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
537
538 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
539 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
540 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
541 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
542 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
543 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
544 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
545 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
546 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
547 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
548 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
549 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
550 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
551 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
552 probably in separate manual.
553
554 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
555 the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
556 with the color used for the transparent regions.)
557
558 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
559 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
560 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
561 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
562
563 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
564 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
565
566 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
567 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
568 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
569 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
570 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
571 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
572 and from the calls.
573
574 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
575 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
576
577 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
578 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
579 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
580 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
581 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
582
583 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
584 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
585 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
586 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
587 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
588 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
589 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
590 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
591 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
592
593 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
594 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
595 addition to ASCII.
596
597 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
598
599 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
600 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
601
602 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
603 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
604 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
605 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
606
607 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
608 but which can also be used as a modifier).
609
610 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
611 Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
612 lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
613
614 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
615 See thread
616 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
617 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
618
619 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
620 See thread
621 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
622
623 ** Possibly add a "close" button to the modeline.
624 The idea is to add an "X" of some kind, that when clicked deletes
625 the window associated with that modeline.
626 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02416.html
627
628 * Things to be done for specific packages or features
629
630 ** NeXTstep port
631
632 *** Bugs
633
634 **** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
635 up on top of all others
636
637 **** free_frame_resources, face colors
638
639 **** Numeric keysetting bug.
640
641 *** Mac-related
642
643 **** Open file:/// URLs.
644
645 **** Put frame autopositioning into C code somewhere -- if loc = same, offset.
646
647 **** Automap ctrl-mouse-1 to mouse-3.
648
649 **** Deal with Finder aliases somehow.
650
651 **** Ctrl-F2 won't pull up menus.
652
653 *** Other / Low Priority:
654
655 **** Better recognition of unicode scripts / Greek / composition.
656
657 **** Undo for color-drag face customization.
658
659 ** ImageMagick support
660
661 *** image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
662 ImageMagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
663 prefering the ImageMagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in jpegs.
664
665 Try (setq image-type-header-regexps nil) for a quick hack to prefer
666 ImageMagick over the jpg loader.
667
668 *** For some reason its unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
669 image bundle using the :index feature. The ImageMagick "display"
670 command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the Emacs
671 code. It seems ImageMagick tries to unpack every page when loading the
672 bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase in Emacs though.
673
674 ImageMagick 6.6.2-9 introduced a bugfix for single page djvu load. It
675 is now much faster to use the :index feature, but still not very fast.
676
677 *** Try to cache the num pages calculation. It can take a while to
678 calculate the number of pages, and if you need to do it for each page
679 view, page-flipping becomes uselessly slow.
680
681 *** Integrate with image-dired.
682
683 *** Integrate with docview.
684
685 *** Integrate with image-mode.
686 Some work has been done, e.g. M-x image-transform-fit-to-height will
687 fit the image to the height of the Emacs window.
688
689 *** Look for optimizations for handling images with low depth.
690 Currently the code seems to default to 24 bit RGB which is costly for
691 images with lower bit depth.
692
693 *** Decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
694 functions for image size etc.
695
696 *** Test with more systems.
697 Tested on Fedora 12, 14, and the libmagick that ships with it.
698 I also tried using an ImageMagick compiled from their SVN, in
699 parallel with the one packaged by Fedora, it worked well.
700 Ubuntu 8.04 was tested, but it seems it ships a broken ImageMagick.
701
702 ** nxml mode
703
704 *** High priority
705
706 **** Command to insert an element template, including all required
707 attributes and child elements. When there's a choice of elements
708 possible, we could insert a comment, and put an overlay on that
709 comment that makes it behave like a button with a pop-up menu to
710 select the appropriate choice.
711
712 **** Command to tag a region. With a schema should complete using legal
713 tags, but should work without a schema as well.
714
715 **** Provide a way to conveniently rename an element. With a schema should
716 complete using legal tags, but should work without a schema as well.
717
718 *** Outlining
719
720 **** Implement C-c C-o C-q.
721
722 **** Install pre/post command hook for moving out of invisible section.
723
724 **** Put a modify hook on invisible sections that expands them.
725
726 **** Integrate dumb folding somehow.
727
728 **** An element should be able to be its own heading.
729
730 **** Optimize to avoid complete buffer scan on each command.
731
732 **** Make it work with HTML-style headings (i.e. level indicated by
733 name of heading element rather than depth of section nesting).
734
735 **** Recognize root element as a section provided it has a title, even
736 if it doesn't match section-element-name-regex.
737
738 **** Support for incremental search automatically making hidden text visible.
739
740 **** Allow title to be an attribute.
741
742 **** Command that says to recognize the tag at point as a section/heading.
743
744 **** Explore better ways to determine when an element is a section
745 or a heading.
746
747 **** rng-next-error needs to either ignore invisible portion or reveal it
748 (maybe use isearch oriented text properties).
749
750 **** Errors within hidden section should be highlighted by underlining the
751 ellipsis.
752
753 **** Make indirect buffers work.
754
755 **** How should nxml-refresh outline recover from non well-formed tags?
756
757 **** Hide tags in title elements?
758
759 **** Use overlays instead of text properties for holding outline state?
760 Necessary for indirect buffers to work?
761
762 **** Allow an outline to go in the speedbar.
763
764 **** Split up outlining manual section into subsections.
765
766 **** More detail in the manual about each outlining command.
767
768 **** More menu entries for hiding/showing?
769
770 **** Indication of many lines have been hidden?
771
772 *** Locating schemas
773
774 **** Should rng-validate-mode give the user an opportunity to specify a
775 schema if there is currently none? Or should it at least give a hint
776 to the user how to specify a non-vacuous schema?
777
778 **** Support for adding new schemas to schema-locating files.
779 Add documentElement and namespace elements.
780
781 **** C-c C-w should be able to report current type id.
782
783 **** Implement doctypePublicId.
784
785 **** Implement typeIdBase.
786
787 **** Implement typeIdProcessingInstruction.
788
789 **** Support xml:base.
790
791 **** Implement group.
792
793 **** Find preferred prefix from schema-locating files. Get rid of
794 rng-preferred-prefix-alist.
795
796 **** Inserting document element with vacuous schema should complete using
797 document elements declared in schema locating files, and set schema
798 appropriately.
799
800 **** Add a ruleType attribute to the <include> element?
801
802 **** Allow processing instruction in prolog to contain the compact syntax
803 schema directly.
804
805 **** Use RDDL to locate a schema based on the namespace URI.
806
807 **** Should not prompt to add redundant association to schema locating file.
808
809 **** Command to reload current schema.
810
811 *** Schema-sensitive features
812
813 **** Should filter dynamic markup possibilities using schema validity, by
814 adding hook to nxml-mode.
815
816 **** Dynamic markup word should (at least optionally) be able to look in
817 other buffers that are using nxml-mode.
818
819 **** Should clicking on Invalid move to next error if already on an error?
820
821 **** Take advantage of a:documentation. Needs change to schema format.
822
823 **** Provide feasible validation (as in Jing) toggle.
824
825 **** Save the validation state as a property on the error overlay to enable
826 more detailed diagnosis.
827
828 **** Provide an Error Summary buffer showing all the validation errors.
829
830 **** Pop-up menu. What is useful? Tag a region (should be greyed out if
831 the region is not balanced). Suggestions based on error messages.
832
833 **** Have configurable list of namespace URIs so that we can provide
834 namespace URI completion on extension elements or with schema-less documents.
835
836 **** Allow validation to handle XInclude.
837
838 **** ID/IDREF support.
839
840 *** Completion
841
842 **** Make it work with icomplete. Only use a function to complete when
843 some of the possible names have undeclared namespaces.
844
845 **** How should C-return in mixed text work?
846
847 **** When there's a vacuous schema, C-return after < will insert the end-tag.
848 Is this a bug or a feature?
849
850 **** After completing start-tag, ensure we don't get unhelpful message
851 from validation
852
853 **** Syntax table for completion.
854
855 **** Should complete start-tag name with a space if namespace attributes
856 are required.
857
858 **** When completing start-tag name with no prefix and it doesn't match
859 should try to infer namespace from local name.
860
861 **** Should completion pay attention to characters after point? If so, how?
862
863 **** When completing start-tag name, add required atts if only one required
864 attribute.
865
866 **** When completing attribute name, add attribute value if only one value
867 is possible.
868
869 **** After attribute-value completion, insert space after close delimiter
870 if more attributes are required.
871
872 **** Complete on enumerated data values in elements.
873
874 **** When in context that allows only elements, should get tag
875 completion without having to type < first.
876
877 **** When immediately after start-tag name, and name is valid and not
878 prefix of any other name, should C-return complete on attribute names?
879
880 **** When completing attributes, more consistent to ignore all attributes
881 after point.
882
883 **** Inserting attribute value completions needs to be sensitive to what
884 delimiter is used so that it quotes the correct character.
885
886 **** Complete on encoding-names in XML decl.
887
888 **** Complete namespace declarations by searching for all namespaces
889 mentioned in the schema.
890
891 *** Well-formed XML support
892
893 **** Deal better with Mule-UCS
894
895 **** Deal with UTF-8 BOM when reading.
896
897 **** Complete entity names.
898
899 **** Provide some support for entity names for MathML.
900
901 **** Command to repeat the last tag.
902
903 **** Support for changing between character references and characters.
904 Need to check that context is one in which character references are
905 allowed. xmltok prolog parsing will need to distinguish parameter
906 literals from other kinds of literal.
907
908 **** Provide a comment command to bind to M-; that works better than the
909 normal one.
910
911 **** Make indenting in a multi-line comment work.
912
913 **** Structure view. Separate buffer displaying element tree.
914 Be able to navigate from structure view to document and vice-versa.
915
916 **** Flash matching >.
917
918 **** Smart selection command that selects increasingly large syntactically
919 coherent chunks of XML. If point is in an attribute value, first
920 select complete value; then if command is repeated, select value plus
921 delimiters, then select attribute name as well, then complete
922 start-tag, then complete element, then enclosing element, etc.
923
924 **** ispell integration.
925
926 **** Block-level items in mixed content should be indented, e.g:
927 <para>This is list:
928 <ul>
929 <li>item</li>
930
931 **** Provide option to indent like this:
932 <para>This is a paragraph
933 occupying multiple lines.</para>
934
935 **** Option to add make a / that closes a start-tag electrically insert a
936 space for the XHTML guys.
937
938 **** C-M-q should work.
939
940 *** Datatypes
941
942 **** Figure out workaround for CJK characters with regexps.
943
944 **** Does category C contain Cn?
945
946 **** Do ENTITY datatype properly.
947
948 *** XML Parsing Library
949
950 **** Parameter entity parsing option, nil (never), t (always),
951 unless-standalone (unless standalone="yes" in XML declaration).
952
953 **** When a file is currently being edited, there should be an option to
954 use its buffer instead of the on-disk copy.
955
956 *** Handling all XML features
957
958 **** Provide better support for editing external general parsed entities.
959 Perhaps provide a way to force ignoring undefined entities; maybe turn
960 this on automatically with <?xml encoding=""?> (with no version
961 pseudo-att).
962
963 **** Handle internal general entity declarations containing elements.
964
965 **** Handle external general entity declarations.
966
967 **** Handle default attribute declarations in internal subset.
968
969 **** Handle parameter entities (including DTD).
970
971 *** RELAX NG
972
973 **** Do complete schema checking, at least optionally.
974
975 **** Detect include/external loops during schema parse.
976
977 **** Coding system detection for schemas. Should use utf-8/utf-16 per the
978 spec. But also need to allow encodings other than UTF-8/16 to support
979 CJK charsets that Emacs cannot represent in Unicode.
980
981 *** Catching XML errors
982
983 **** Check public identifiers.
984
985 **** Check default attribute values.
986
987 *** Performance
988
989 **** Explore whether overlay-recenter can cure overlays performance problems.
990
991 **** Cache schemas. Need to have list of files and mtimes.
992
993 **** Make it possible to reduce rng-validate-chunk-size significantly,
994 perhaps to 500 bytes, without bad performance impact: don't do
995 redisplay on every chunk; pass continue functions on other uses of
996 rng-do-some-validation.
997
998 **** Cache after first tag.
999
1000 **** Introduce a new name class that is a choice between names (so that
1001 we can use member)
1002
1003 **** intern-choice should simplify after patterns with same 1st/2nd args
1004
1005 **** Large numbers of overlays slow things down dramatically. Represent
1006 errors using text properties. This implies we cannot incrementally
1007 keep track of the number of errors, in order to determine validity.
1008 Instead, when validation completes, scan for any characters with an
1009 error text property; this seems to be fast enough even with large
1010 buffers. Problem with error at end of buffer, where there's no
1011 character; need special variable for this. Need to merge face from
1012 font-lock with the error face: use :inherit attribute with list of two
1013 faces. How do we avoid making rng-valid depend on nxml-mode?
1014
1015 *** Error recovery
1016
1017 **** Don't stop at newline in looking for close of start-tag.
1018
1019 **** Use indentation to guide recovery from mismatched end-tags
1020
1021 **** Don't keep parsing when currently not well-formed but previously
1022 well-formed
1023
1024 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag by popping an open element if
1025 there was a mismatched end-tag unaccounted for.
1026
1027 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag open on the hypothesis that there
1028 was an error in the namespace URI.
1029
1030 **** Better recovery from ill-formed XML declarations.
1031
1032 *** Useability improvements
1033
1034 **** Should print a "Parsing..." message during long movements.
1035
1036 **** Provide better position for reference to undefined pattern error.
1037
1038 **** Put Well-formed in the mode-line when validating against any-content.
1039
1040 **** Trim marking of illegal data for leading and trailing whitespace.
1041
1042 **** Show Invalid status as soon as we are sure it's invalid, rather than
1043 waiting for everything to be completely up to date.
1044
1045 **** When narrowed, Valid or Invalid status should probably consider only
1046 validity of narrowed region.
1047
1048 *** Bug fixes
1049
1050 **** Need to give an error for a document like: <foo/><![CDATA[ ]]>
1051
1052 **** Make nxml-forward-balanced-item work better for the prolog.
1053
1054 **** Make filling and indenting comments work in the prolog.
1055
1056 **** Should delete RNC Input buffers.
1057
1058 **** Figure out what regex use for NCName and use it consistently,
1059
1060 **** Should have not-well-formed tokens in ref.
1061
1062 **** Require version in XML declaration? Probably not because prevents
1063 use for external parsed entities. At least forbid standalone without version.
1064
1065 **** Reject schema that compiles to rng-not-allowed-ipattern.
1066
1067 **** Move point backwards on schema parse error so that it's on the right token.
1068
1069 *** Internal
1070
1071 **** Use rng-quote-string consistently.
1072
1073 **** Use parsing library for XML to texinfo conversion.
1074
1075 **** Rename xmltok.el to nxml-token.el. Use nxml-t- prefix instead of
1076 xmltok-. Change nxml-t-type to nxml-t-token-type, nxml-t-start to
1077 nxml-t-token-start.
1078
1079 **** Can we set fill-prefix to nil and rely on indenting?
1080
1081 **** xmltok should make available replacement text of entities containing
1082 elements
1083
1084 **** In rng-valid, instead of using modification-hooks and
1085 insert-behind-hooks on dependent overlays, use same technique as nxml-mode.
1086
1087 **** Port to XEmacs. Issues include: Unicode (XEmacs seems to be based on
1088 Mule-UCS); overlays/text properties vs extents; absence of
1089 fontification-functions hook.
1090
1091 *** Fontification
1092
1093 **** Allow face to depend on element qname, attribute qname, attribute
1094 value. Use list with pairs of (R . F), where R specifies regexps and
1095 F specifies faces. How can this list be made to depend on the document type?
1096
1097 *** Other
1098
1099 **** Support RELAX NG XML syntax (use XML parsing library).
1100
1101 **** Support W3C XML Schema (use XML parsing library).
1102
1103 **** Command to infer schema from current document (like trang).
1104
1105 *** Schemas
1106
1107 **** XSLT schema should take advantage of RELAX NG to express cooccurrence
1108 constraints on attributes (e.g. xsl:template).
1109
1110 *** Documentation
1111
1112 **** Move material from README to manual.
1113
1114 **** Document encodings.
1115
1116 *** Notes
1117
1118 **** How can we allow an error to be displayed on a different token from
1119 where it is detected? In particular, for a missing closing ">" we
1120 will need to display it at the beginning of the following token. At the
1121 moment, when we parse the following token the error overlay will get cleared.
1122
1123 **** How should rng-goto-next-error deal with narrowing?
1124
1125 **** Perhaps should merge errors having same start position even if they
1126 have different ends.
1127
1128 **** How to handle surrogates? One possibility is to be compatible with
1129 utf8.e: represent as sequence of 4 chars. But utf-16 is incompatible
1130 with this.
1131
1132 **** Should we distinguish well-formedness errors from invalidity errors?
1133 (I think not: we may want to recover from a bad start-tag by implying
1134 an end-tag.)
1135
1136 **** Seems to be a bug with Emacs, where a mouse movement that causes
1137 help-echo text to appear counts as pending input but does not cause
1138 idle timer to be restarted.
1139
1140 **** Use XML to represent this file.
1141
1142 **** I had a TODO which said simply "split-string". What did I mean?
1143
1144 **** Investigate performance on large files all on one line.
1145
1146 *** Issues for Emacs versions >= 22
1147
1148 **** Take advantage of UTF-8 CJK support.
1149
1150 **** Supply a next-error-function.
1151
1152 **** Investigate this NEWS item "Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding
1153 systems for HTML/XML files automatically."
1154
1155 **** Take advantage of the pointer text property.
1156
1157 **** Leverage char-displayable-p.
1158
1159 * Internal changes
1160
1161 ** Cleanup all the GC_ mark bit stuff -- there is no longer any distinction
1162 since the mark bit is no longer stored in the Lisp_Object itself.
1163
1164 ** Refine the `predicate' arg to read-file-name.
1165 Currently, it mixes up the predicate to apply when doing completion and the
1166 one to use when terminating the selection.
1167
1168 ** Merge ibuffer.el and buff-menu.el.
1169 More specifically do what's needed to make ibuffer.el the default,
1170 or just an extension of buff-menu.el.
1171
1172 ** Use pcomplete by default in shell-mode.
1173 This means to make it behave (by default) more like the current code.
1174 Use it also for read-shell-command, M-x compile, ...
1175
1176 ** Merge sendmail.el and messages.el.
1177 Probably not a complete merge, but at least arrange for messages.el to be
1178 a derived mode of sendmail.el. Or arrange for messages.el to be split
1179 into a small core and "the rest" so that we use less resources as long as
1180 we stick to the features provided in sendmail.el.
1181
1182 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
1183 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
1184 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
1185 this.]
1186
1187 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
1188
1189 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
1190 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
1191 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
1192 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
1193 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
1194
1195 ** Make SYNC_INPUT the default. [true since 2008-03-11]
1196 All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
1197 C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
1198 switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
1199 allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
1200 data munging.
1201
1202 ** Add "link" button class
1203 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
1204 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
1205 class to the standard "link" face.
1206
1207 * Other known bugs:
1208
1209 ** `make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
1210
1211 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
1212 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
1213
1214 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
1215 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
1216
1217 \f
1218 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1219
1220 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1221 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1222 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1223 (at your option) any later version.
1224
1225 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1226 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1227 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1228 GNU General Public License for more details.
1229
1230 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1231 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1232
1233 ;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036