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 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
175 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like "
176 [Function has advice]". It might look like
177 (defun foo [Function has advice] (x y)
178 The overlay could also be a button that you could use to view the advice.
182 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status
185 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
187 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
188 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
189 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
190 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
192 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
193 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
194 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
195 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
196 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
197 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
198 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
199 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
200 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
202 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
204 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
205 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
206 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
208 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
209 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
210 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
211 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
213 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
214 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
215 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
216 where one language is embedded in another language. See
217 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
218 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches took by others.
220 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
221 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
222 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
224 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
225 output to a different filter.
227 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
230 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
233 ** Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
234 which gives the same information through a menu structure. [Dave
235 Love started on this.]
237 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
239 ** Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
240 GNU Privacy Guard for encryption. [Code exists but isn't assigned.
241 See the Gnus development sources for assigned code concerning GPG
242 use with mail, which is probably a good start.] See also
243 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/auto-crypt.tgz.
245 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
246 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
248 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
249 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
250 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
251 when the user tries to use the menubar.
253 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
254 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
255 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
256 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
258 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
259 significant work), PSGML. Check the assignments file for other
260 packages which might go in and have been missed.
262 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
263 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
264 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
267 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
268 an example how to do part of this.
270 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
273 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
274 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
275 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
277 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
278 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
280 ** Support simultaneous tty and X frames. [See the multi-tty branch of Emacs
281 at http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.]
283 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
284 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
285 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
287 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
288 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
289 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important
292 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
294 ** Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
299 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
300 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
302 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
303 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
304 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
306 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
307 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on
310 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
312 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
314 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
316 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
317 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
319 ** Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
322 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
323 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
325 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
326 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
327 thought this was feasible.]
329 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
330 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
331 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
333 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
334 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
335 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
336 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
337 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
338 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
339 already for Emacs 22 and consult fx.]
341 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
342 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
343 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
345 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
348 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
350 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
351 when the body only calls primitives.
353 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
355 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
356 colors of the applicable faces.
360 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
361 or the end of the buffer.
363 ** Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
366 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
367 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
368 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
370 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
371 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
372 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
373 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
376 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
377 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
378 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
379 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
381 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
382 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
383 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
384 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
385 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
386 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
387 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
388 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
389 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
390 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
391 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
392 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
393 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
394 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
395 probably in separate manual.
397 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
398 the XPMs so that the colour versions work generally. (Requires care
399 with the colour used for the transparent regions.)
401 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
402 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
403 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
404 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
406 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
407 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
409 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
410 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
411 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
412 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
413 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
414 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
417 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
418 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
420 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
421 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
422 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
423 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
424 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
426 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
427 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
428 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
429 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
430 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
431 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
432 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
433 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
434 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
436 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
437 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
440 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
442 ** OpenType font support for various complex scripts (e.g. Devanagari).
443 As X protocal doesn't provide a way to access OpenType Layout Tables
444 in a OpenType font of a server side, we need a way to utilize local
445 fonts (perhaps by directly using the Freetype library or indirectly
448 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
449 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
451 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
452 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
453 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
454 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
456 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
457 but which can also be used as a modifier).
459 ** Provide the toolbar on ttys. This could map a bit like tmm-menubar
460 for the menubar and buttons could look a bit like those used by customize.
462 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
463 Info, but also with regard to namespace), add a forward button to make the
464 Help buffer more browser like and gives the value of lisp expressions
465 e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face. [nickrob@snap.net.nz has a patch
466 for this for inclusion after 22.1].
468 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
470 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
471 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
475 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
476 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
477 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
480 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
482 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
483 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
484 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
485 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
486 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
488 ** Make SYNC_INPUT the default.
489 All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
490 C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
491 switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
492 allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
497 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
498 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
500 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
501 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
505 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
506 a copy of this file, to deal in the file without restriction, including
507 without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
508 distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the file, and to
509 permit persons to whom the file is furnished to do so, subject to
510 the following condition:
512 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
513 included in all copies or substantial portions of the file.
515 ;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036