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
10 Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
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.
15 * Make compile.el record the markers that point to error loci
16 on text properties in the error message lines.
20 * Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
21 display a font as a sample, etc.
23 * Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
24 decent single definition of RTF?]
26 * Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
27 probably needs some primitive support.
29 * Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
30 properly with variable-pitch faces.
32 * Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
33 C-v to scroll through a tall image.
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.
42 * Make movemail work with IMAP.
44 * Internationalize Emacs's messages.
46 * Port Emacs to GTK+. (Relevant work has been done already.)
48 * Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text.
50 * Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
51 be only full columns/lines.
53 * Move fringe to be displayed between display margins and text area.
54 [KFS is looking into this].
56 * Set fringe widths per-window/per-buffer.
58 * Make fringe bitmaps user configurable. Maybe add ability to add
59 additional bitmaps to the fringe from lisp.
61 Other features we would like:
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.
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.
72 * Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
73 different parts of a buffer.
75 * Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
76 output to a different filter.
78 * Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
81 * Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
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.]
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.]
91 * Save undo information in files, and reload it when needed
94 * Merge the Emacs regex.c with the Glibc regex.c.
95 They split off a few years ago through negligance.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
116 * Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
117 an example how to do part of this.
119 * Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
122 * Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
123 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
125 * Support simultaneous tty and X frames.
127 * Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library.
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.
133 * Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
135 * Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
140 * Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
141 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
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.
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?,...
151 * Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
152 the Boehm collector.)
154 * Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
156 * Implement some variety of (non-gtk) drag-and-drop support under X.
157 Using libdnd might be a good start.
159 * Add horizontal scroll bars.
161 * Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
162 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
164 * Integrate Vroonhof's Custom themes code and make it do useful
165 things. [The integration is partly done.]
167 * Adapt the gnuserv/gnudoit features for server/emacsclient.
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.
173 * Add a feature to Info similar to "info --apropos SUBJECT".
175 * If you do an insert-file and that file is currently modified in
176 another buffer but not written yet, print a warning.
178 * Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
181 * Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
182 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
184 * Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
185 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
186 thought this was feasible.]
188 * Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
189 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
190 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
192 * Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
193 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
194 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
195 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
196 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
197 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
198 already for Emacs 22 and consult fx.]
200 * Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
201 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
202 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
204 * Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
207 * Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
209 * Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
210 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
211 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least.
213 * Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
215 * Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
218 * Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
220 * Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
221 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs.
223 * Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
224 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
225 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
226 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
229 * Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
230 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
231 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
232 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
234 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
235 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
236 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
237 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
238 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
239 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
240 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
241 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
242 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
243 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
244 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
245 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
246 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
247 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
248 probably in separate manual.