etc/TODO

   1                                                                 -*-text-*-
   2
   3 Small but important fixes in existing features:
   4
   5 * Bring back the feature of showing the part of the buffer that is a problem
   6   for the use of the preferred coding systems.
   7
   8 * Make compile.el record the markers that point to error loci
   9   on text properties in the error message lines.
  10
  11 Important features:
  12
  13 * Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
  14   display a font as a sample, etc.
  15
  16 * Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF.  [Is there actually a
  17   decent single definition of RTF?]
  18
  19 * Implement something better than the current Refill mode.  This
  20   probably needs some primitive support.
  21
  22 * Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
  23   properly with variable-pitch faces.
  24
  25 * Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility.
  26
  27 * Implement other text formatting properties.
  28 ** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
  29 ** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
  30    Don't break the line between two characters that have the
  31    same value of this property.
  32 ** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
  33
  34 * Make movemail work with IMAP.
  35
  36 * Internationalize Emacs's messages.
  37
  38 * Port Emacs to GTK+.  (Relevant work has been done already.)
  39
  40 * Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text.
  41
  42 * Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
  43   be only full columns/lines.
  44
  45 Other features we would like:
  46
  47 * Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
  48   of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
  49   It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
  50
  51 * Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
  52   different parts of a buffer.
  53
  54 * Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
  55   output to a different filter.
  56
  57 * Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
  58   useful sense).
  59
  60 * Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
  61   which gives the same information through a menu structure.  [Dave
  62   Love started on this.]
  63
  64 * Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
  65   GNU Privacy Guard for encryption.  [Code exists but isn't assigned.]
  66
  67 * Save undo information in files, and reload it when needed
  68   for undoing.
  69
  70 * Change the Windows NT menu code
  71   so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
  72   regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
  73   when the user tries to use the menubar.
  74
  75   This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
  76   the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
  77   thread has processed the menu_bar_activate_event and regenerated
  78   the whole menu bar.  In the mean time, it should process other messages.
  79
  80 * Get some major packages installed: W3/url (development version needs
  81   significant work), PSGML, Mule-UCS, Tramp (?).  Check the
  82   assignments file for other packages which might go in and have been
  83   missed.
  84
  85 * Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
  86   keymap.c).  What should it do apart from being opaque ?
  87   multiple inheritance ?  faster where-is ?  no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
  88   what else ?
  89
  90 * Provide real menus on ttys.  The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
  91   an example how to do part of this.
  92
  93 * Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
  94   macros in cl-macs.
  95
  96 * Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs).
  97
  98 * Support simultaneous tty and X frames.
  99
 100 * Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library.
 101
 102 * Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
 103   mismatches that we get with proprietary compilers on various systems.
 104   They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
 105
 106 * Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
 107
 108 * Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
 109   automatically.
 110
 111 * Update the FAQ.
 112
 113 * Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
 114   [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
 115
 116 * Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
 117   ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
 118   environment.  What should not be ignored needs consideration.
 119
 120 * Investigate using the language environment (or locale?) to set up
 121   more things, such as the default Ispell dictionary, calendar
 122   holidays, quoting characters?,...
 123
 124 * Improve the GC (generational, incremental).  (We may be able to use
 125   the Boehm collector.)
 126
 127 * Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
 128
 129 * Implement some variety of (non-gtk) drag-and-drop support under X.
 130   Using libdnd might be a good start.
 131
 132 * Add horizontal scroll bars.
 133
 134 * Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
 135   size and its position from lines instead of characters.
 136
 137 * Integrate Vroonhof's Custom themes code and make it do useful
 138   things.  [The integration is partly done.]
 139
 140 * Adapt the gnuserv/gnudoit features for server/emacsclient.
 141
 142 * Investigate using GNU Lightning or similar system for incremental
 143   compilation of selected bytecode functions to subrs.  Converting CCL
 144   programs to native code is probably the first thing to try, though.
 145
 146 * Add a feature to Info similar to "info --apropos SUBJECT".
 147
 148 * If you do an insert-file and that file is currently modified in
 149   another buffer but not written yet, print a warning.
 150
 151 * Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
 152   Emacs.
 153
 154 * Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
 155
 156 * Rewrite make-docfile to something sane.
 157
 158 * Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
 159   to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs.
 160
 161 * Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
 162   ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
 163   This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
 164   aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
 165
 166   Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
 167   artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
 168   completion, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
 169   easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
 170   generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
 171   [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
 172   mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
 173   snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
 174   the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
 175   vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
 176   swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
 177   refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
 178   cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
 179   cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
 180   probably in separate manual.