etc/TODO

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