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 ** describe-face should show an example of text in the face.
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 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
54 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
55 variables whose values are currently hidden.
57 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
58 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
59 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
60 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
62 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
64 ** Make occur handle multi-line matches cleanly with context.
66 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
67 using a heuristic of some kind?
69 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
70 See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
72 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
73 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
74 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
75 without menu and tool bar lines.
77 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
78 and they should create Custom buffers.
80 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
82 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
84 ** Modify allout.el to use overlays, like outline.el.
86 ** M-! M-n should fetch the buffer-file-name as the default.
88 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
89 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
90 recording which file the latest definition came from.
92 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
96 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
97 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
98 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
100 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
102 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
104 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
105 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
106 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
107 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
110 ** Implement something better than the current Refill mode. This
111 probably needs some primitive support.
113 ** Add a command to make a "Local Variables" section in the current buffer
114 and/or add a variable to the list.
116 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
117 properly with variable-pitch faces.
119 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
120 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
121 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
123 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
124 (see http://graphics.csail.mit.edu/~rcm/chi04.pdf).
126 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
127 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
128 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
129 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
130 same value of this property.
131 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
133 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
135 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
136 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
138 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
140 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
141 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
142 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
144 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
145 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
147 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
148 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
149 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
150 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
151 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
152 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
153 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
154 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
155 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
157 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
158 be only full columns/lines.
160 * Other features we would like:
162 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
163 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
164 ** Create a category of errors called `user-error' for errors which are
165 typically due to pilot errors and should thus be in debug-ignored-errors.
167 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
169 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
170 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
172 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
173 and put some other errors under it.
175 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
176 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
178 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
180 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
181 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
182 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
183 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
184 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
186 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
187 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
188 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
189 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
190 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
191 customization buffers.
193 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
194 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
195 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
196 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
197 use to view the advice.
201 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status
204 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
206 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
207 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
208 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
209 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
211 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
212 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
213 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
214 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
215 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
216 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
217 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
218 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
219 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
221 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
223 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
224 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
225 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
227 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
228 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
229 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
230 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
232 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
233 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
234 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
235 where one language is embedded in another language. See
236 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
237 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches took by others.
239 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
240 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
241 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
243 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
244 output to a different filter.
246 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
249 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named
252 ** Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
253 which gives the same information through a menu structure. [Dave
254 Love started on this.]
256 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
258 ** Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
259 GNU Privacy Guard for encryption. [Code exists but isn't assigned.
260 See the Gnus development sources for assigned code concerning GPG
261 use with mail, which is probably a good start.] See also
262 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/auto-crypt.tgz.
264 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
265 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
267 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
268 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
269 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
270 when the user tries to use the menubar.
272 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
273 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
274 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
275 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
277 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
278 significant work), PSGML. Check the assignments file for other
279 packages which might go in and have been missed.
281 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
282 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
283 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
286 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
287 an example how to do part of this.
289 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
292 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
293 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
294 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
296 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
297 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
299 ** Support simultaneous tty and X frames. [See the multi-tty branch of Emacs
300 at http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.]
302 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
303 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
304 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
306 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
307 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
308 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important
311 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
313 ** Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
318 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
319 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
321 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
322 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
323 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
325 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
326 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on
329 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
331 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
333 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
335 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
336 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
338 ** Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
341 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
342 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
344 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
345 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
346 thought this was feasible.]
348 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
349 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
350 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
352 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
353 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
354 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
355 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
356 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
357 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
358 already for Emacs 22 and consult fx.]
360 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
361 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
362 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
364 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
367 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
369 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
370 when the body only calls primitives.
372 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
374 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
375 colors of the applicable faces.
379 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
381 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
382 or the end of the buffer.
384 ** Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
387 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
388 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
389 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
391 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
392 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
393 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
394 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
397 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
398 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
399 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
400 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
402 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
403 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
404 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
405 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
406 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
407 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
408 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
409 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
410 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
411 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
412 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
413 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
414 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
415 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
416 probably in separate manual.
418 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
419 the XPMs so that the colour versions work generally. (Requires care
420 with the colour used for the transparent regions.)
422 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
423 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
424 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
425 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
427 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
428 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
430 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
431 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
432 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
433 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
434 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
435 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
438 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
439 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
441 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
442 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
443 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
444 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
445 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
447 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
448 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
449 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
450 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
451 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
452 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
453 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
454 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
455 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
457 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
458 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
461 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
463 ** OpenType font support for various complex scripts (e.g. Devanagari).
464 As X protocal doesn't provide a way to access OpenType Layout Tables
465 in a OpenType font of a server side, we need a way to utilize local
466 fonts (perhaps by directly using the Freetype library or indirectly
469 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
470 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
472 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
473 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
474 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
475 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
477 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
478 but which can also be used as a modifier).
480 ** Provide the toolbar on ttys. This could map a bit like tmm-menubar
481 for the menubar and buttons could look a bit like those used by customize.
483 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
484 Info, but also with regard to namespace), add a forward button to make the
485 Help buffer more browser like and gives the value of lisp expressions
486 e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face. [nickrob@snap.net.nz has a patch
487 for this for inclusion after 22.1].
489 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
491 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
492 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
494 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
496 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
500 ** Merge ibuffer.el and buff-menu.el.
501 More specifically do what's needed to make ibuffer.el the default,
502 or just an extension of buff-menu.el.
504 ** Use pcomplete by default in shell-mode.
505 This means to make it behave (by default) more like the current code.
506 Use it also for read-shell-command, M-x compile, ...
508 ** Merge sendmail.el and messages.el.
509 Probably not a complete merge, but at least arrange for messages.el to be
510 a derived mode of sendmail.el. Or arrange for messages.el to be split
511 into a small core and "the rest" so that we use less resources as long as
512 we stick to the features provided in sendmail.el.
514 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
515 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
516 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
519 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
521 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
522 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
523 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
524 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
525 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
527 ** Make SYNC_INPUT the default.
528 All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
529 C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
530 switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
531 allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
534 ** Add "link" button class
535 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
536 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
537 class to the standard "link" face.
541 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
542 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
544 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
545 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
549 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
550 a copy of this file, to deal in the file without restriction, including
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553 permit persons to whom the file is furnished to do so, subject to
554 the following condition:
556 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
557 included in all copies or substantial portions of the file.
559 ;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036