1 Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
3 Copyright (c) 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
4 Free software Foundation, Inc.
5 See the end of the file for copying permissions.
7 If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we
8 appreciate your help; please write to emacs-devel@gnu.org so we can be
9 aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do
10 it best. Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be
11 prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work
14 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
16 ** mouse-autoselect-window should wait to select the window until
17 the mouse is put to rest or after a delay or both, so that moving over
18 a window doesn't select it.
20 ** In C-x d, the default if you type RET should be the directory name,
21 but if you type M-n you should get the visited file name of the
24 ** whitespace-cleanup should work only on the region if the region is active.
26 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
27 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
29 ** Make vc-checkin avoid reverting the buffer if has not changed after
30 the checkin. Comparing (md5 BUFFER) to (md5 FILE) should be enough.
32 ** buffer-offer-save should be a permanent local.
34 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
36 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
38 ** Make occur correctly handle matches that span more than one line,
39 as well as overlapping matches.
41 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
42 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
43 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
44 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
45 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
47 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
48 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
49 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
51 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
52 variables whose values are currently hidden.
54 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
55 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
56 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
57 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
59 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
61 ** Make occur handle multi-line matches cleanly with context.
63 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
64 using a heuristic of some kind?
66 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
67 See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
69 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
70 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
71 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
72 without menu and tool bar lines.
74 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
75 and they should create Custom buffers.
77 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
79 ** Modify allout.el to use overlays, like outline.el.
81 ** M-! M-n should fetch the buffer-file-name as the default.
83 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
84 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
85 recording which file the latest definition came from.
89 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
90 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
91 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
93 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
95 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
96 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
97 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
98 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
101 ** Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
102 probably needs some primitive support.
104 ** Add a command to make a "Local Variables" section in the current buffer
105 and/or add a variable to the list.
107 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
108 properly with variable-pitch faces.
110 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
111 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
112 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
114 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
115 (see http://graphics.csail.mit.edu/~rcm/chi04.pdf).
117 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
118 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
119 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
120 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
121 same value of this property.
122 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
124 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
126 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
128 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
129 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
130 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
132 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
133 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
135 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
136 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
137 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
138 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
139 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
140 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
141 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
142 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
143 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
145 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
146 be only full columns/lines.
148 * Other features we would like:
150 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
151 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
152 ** Create a category of errors called `user-error' for errors which are
153 typically due to pilot errors and should thus be in debug-ignored-errors.
155 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
157 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
158 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
160 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
161 and put some other errors under it.
163 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
164 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
166 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
168 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
169 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
170 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
171 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
172 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
174 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
175 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
176 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
177 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
178 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
179 customization buffers.
181 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
182 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
183 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
184 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
185 use to view the advice.
189 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status
192 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
194 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
195 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
196 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
197 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
199 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
200 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
201 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
202 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
203 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
204 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
205 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
206 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
207 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
209 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
211 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
212 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
213 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
215 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
216 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
217 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
218 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
220 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
221 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
222 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
223 where one language is embedded in another language. See
224 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
225 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches took by others.
227 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
228 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
229 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
231 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
232 output to a different filter.
234 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
237 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
240 ** Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
241 which gives the same information through a menu structure. [Dave
242 Love started on this.]
244 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
246 ** Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
247 GNU Privacy Guard for encryption. [Code exists but isn't assigned.
248 See the Gnus development sources for assigned code concerning GPG
249 use with mail, which is probably a good start.] See also
250 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/auto-crypt.tgz.
252 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
253 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
255 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
256 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
257 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
258 when the user tries to use the menubar.
260 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
261 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
262 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
263 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
265 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
266 significant work), PSGML. Check the assignments file for other
267 packages which might go in and have been missed.
269 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
270 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
271 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
274 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
275 an example how to do part of this.
277 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
280 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
281 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
282 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
284 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
285 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
287 ** Support simultaneous tty and X frames. [See the multi-tty branch of Emacs
288 at http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.]
290 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
291 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
292 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
294 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
295 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
296 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important
299 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
301 ** Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
306 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
307 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
309 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
310 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
311 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
313 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
314 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on
317 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
319 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
321 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
323 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
324 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
326 ** Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
329 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
330 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
332 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
333 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
334 thought this was feasible.]
336 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
337 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
338 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
340 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
341 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
342 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
343 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
344 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
345 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
346 already for Emacs 22 and consult fx.]
348 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
349 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
350 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
352 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
355 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
357 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
358 when the body only calls primitives.
360 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
362 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
363 colors of the applicable faces.
367 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
369 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
370 or the end of the buffer.
372 ** Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
375 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
376 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
377 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
379 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
380 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
381 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
382 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
385 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
386 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
387 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
388 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
390 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
391 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
392 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
393 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
394 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
395 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
396 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
397 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
398 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
399 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
400 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
401 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
402 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
403 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
404 probably in separate manual.
406 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
407 the XPMs so that the colour versions work generally. (Requires care
408 with the colour used for the transparent regions.)
410 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
411 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
412 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
413 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
415 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
416 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
418 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
419 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
420 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
421 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
422 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
423 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
426 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
427 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
429 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
430 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
431 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
432 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
433 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
435 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
436 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
437 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
438 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
439 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
440 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
441 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
442 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
443 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
445 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
446 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
449 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
451 ** OpenType font support for various complex scripts (e.g. Devanagari).
452 As X protocal doesn't provide a way to access OpenType Layout Tables
453 in a OpenType font of a server side, we need a way to utilize local
454 fonts (perhaps by directly using the Freetype library or indirectly
457 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
458 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
460 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
461 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
462 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
463 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
465 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
466 but which can also be used as a modifier).
468 ** Provide the toolbar on ttys. This could map a bit like tmm-menubar
469 for the menubar and buttons could look a bit like those used by customize.
471 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
472 Info, but also with regard to namespace), add a forward button to make the
473 Help buffer more browser like and gives the value of lisp expressions
474 e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face. [nickrob@snap.net.nz has a patch
475 for this for inclusion after 22.1].
477 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
479 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
480 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
484 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
485 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
486 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
489 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
491 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
492 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
493 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
494 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
495 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
497 ** Make SYNC_INPUT the default.
498 All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
499 C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
500 switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
501 allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
504 ** Add "link" button class
505 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
506 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
507 class to the standard "link" face.
511 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
512 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
514 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
515 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
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529 ;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036