1 Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
3 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
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 * Tentative plan for Emacs-24
16 ** concurrency: including it as an "experimental" compile-time option
17 sounds good. Of course there might still be big questions around
18 "which form of concurrency" we'll want.
19 ** Overhaul of customize: sounds wonderful.
20 ** better support for dynamic embedded graphics: I like this idea (my
21 mpc.el code could use it for the volume widget), tho I wonder if the
22 resulting efficiency will be sufficient.
24 ** Improve the "code snippets" support: consolidate skeleton.el, tempo.el,
25 and expand.el (any other?) and then advertise/use/improve it.
26 ** Improve VC: yes, there's a lot of work to be done there :-(
27 And most of it could/should make it into Emacs-23.3.
29 ** Random things that cross my mind right now that I'd like to see (some of
30 them from my local hacks), but it's not obvious at all whether they'll
32 *** multiple inheritance for keymaps (to get rid of the
33 fix_submap_inheritance hack and to more cleanly express the
34 relationship between minibuffer-local-*-map): I've had this locally
35 for a long time, but the details of the semantics is somewhat ... delicate.
36 *** prog-mode could/should provide a better fill-paragraph default
37 that uses syntax-tables to recognize string/comment boundaries.
38 *** provide more completion-at-point-functions. Make existing
39 in-buffer completion use completion-at-point.
40 *** "functional" function-key-map that would make it easy to add (and
41 remove) mappings like "FOO-mouse-4 -> FOO-scroll-down",
42 "FOO-tab -> ?\FOO-\t", "uppercase -> lowercase", "[fringe KEY...] ->
43 [KEY]", "H-FOO -> M-FOO", "C-x C-y FOO -> H-FOO", ...
46 * Simple tasks. These don't require much Emacs knowledge, they are
47 suitable for anyone from beginners to experts.
49 ** Convert modes that use view-mode to be derived from special-mode instead.
51 ** Major modes should have a menu entry. Examples of modes that do
52 not have one at the moment and probably should: text-mode, inferior-lisp-mode.
54 ** Check if all items on the mode-line have a suitable tooltip for all modes.
56 ** edebug and debugger-mode should have a toolbar.
57 It can use the same icons as gud.
59 ** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
62 ** Convert all defvars with leading `*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
63 of appropriate :type and :group.
65 ** Remove any leading `*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
67 ** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
68 This needs a bit of care, since often people have become used to
69 expecting such variables to always be defined, eg when they modify
70 things in their .emacs.
72 ** See if other files can use generated-autoload-file (see eg ps-print).
74 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
76 ** Flymake's customization mechanism needs to be both simpler (fewer
77 levels of indirection) and better documented, so it is easier to
78 understand. I find it quite hard to figure out what compilation
81 I suggest totally rewriting that part of Flymake, using the simplest
82 mechanism that sufficies for the specific needs. That will be easy
83 for users to customize.
85 ** Compute the list of active keymaps *after* reading the first event.
87 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
88 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
90 ** buffer-offer-save should be a permanent local.
92 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
93 For related problems consult the thread starting with
94 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01346.html
96 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
98 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
99 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
100 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
101 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
102 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
104 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
105 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
106 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
108 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
111 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
112 variables whose values are currently hidden.
114 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
115 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
116 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
117 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
119 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
121 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
122 using a heuristic of some kind?
124 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
125 See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
127 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
128 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
129 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
130 without menu and tool bar lines.
132 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
133 and they should create Custom buffers.
135 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
137 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
139 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
140 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
141 recording which file the latest definition came from.
143 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
145 ** Consider improving src/sysdep.c's search for a fqdn.
146 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00782.html
148 ** Find a proper fix for rcirc multiline nick adding.
149 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00684.html
151 ** Implement `network-interface-list' and `network-interface-info'
152 on MS-Windows. Hint: the information is present in the Registry,
154 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Linkage\
156 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<device>\
157 where <device> is the network device found under the first key.
159 ** Check for any included packages that define obsolete bug-reporting commands.
160 Change them to use report-emacs-bug.
162 ** Allow fringe indicators to display a tooltip (provide a help-echo property?)
164 ** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
165 like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
167 ** `dired-mode' should specify the semantics of `buffer-modified-p' for
168 dired buffers and DTRT WRT `auto-revert-mode'.
170 ** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
171 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
173 * Important features:
174 ** Extended text-properties (to make overlays "obsolete")
175 *** Several text-property planes
176 This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
177 get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
178 simply use the `face' property in the `font-lock' plane.
179 Each property would come with an Elisp merge-function. The merge
180 would be performed in add-text-properties.
181 *** zero-width text-properties.
182 ** Having tabs above a window to switch buffers in it.
184 ** "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations. We have
185 had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
186 beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
187 advantage of them. Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.
189 Perspectives work well even if you do the equivalent of C-x 4 C-f
190 because of the distinction between view windows vs file windows. In
191 Emacs this is more or less the "dedicated window" feature, but we have
192 never really made it work for this.
194 Perspectives also need to interact with the tabs.
196 ** Imenu could be extended into a file-structure browsing mechanism
197 using code like that of customize-groups.
199 ** Display something in the margin on lines that have compilation errors.
201 ** Compilation error navigation bar, parallel to the scroll bar,
202 indicating where in the buffer there are compilation errors.
203 Perhaps we could arrange to display these error indications on top
204 of the scroll bar itself. That depends on to what extent toolkit
205 scroll bars are extensible.
207 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
208 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
209 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
211 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
213 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
215 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
216 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
217 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
218 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
221 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
222 properly with variable-pitch faces.
224 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
225 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
226 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
228 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
229 (see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/clustering/chi04.pdf).
231 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
232 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
233 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
234 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
235 same value of this property.
236 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
238 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
240 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
241 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
243 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
245 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
246 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
247 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
249 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
250 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
252 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
253 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
254 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
255 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
256 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
257 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
258 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
259 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
260 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
262 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
263 be only full columns/lines.
265 * Other features we would like:
267 ** Make longlines-mode wrap lines based on screen position instead
268 of character position, so that variable-width fonts can be handled
271 ** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
272 from the emacsclient process.
273 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
274 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
276 ** Create a category of errors called `user-error' for errors which are
277 typically due to pilot errors and should thus be in debug-ignored-errors.
279 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
281 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
282 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
284 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
285 and put some other errors under it.
287 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
288 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
290 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
292 ** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
294 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
295 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
296 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
297 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
298 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
300 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
301 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
302 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
303 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
304 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
305 customization buffers.
307 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
308 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
309 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
310 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
311 use to view the advice.
313 ** Add a function to get the insertion-type of the markers in an overlay.
317 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status messages.
319 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
321 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
322 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
323 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
324 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
326 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
327 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
328 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
329 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
330 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
331 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
332 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
333 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
334 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
336 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
338 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
339 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
340 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
342 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
343 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
344 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
345 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
347 ** Switch the Windows port to using Unicode keyboard input (maybe).
348 Based on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633586.aspx,
349 this boils down to (1) calling RegisterClassW function to register
350 Emacs windows, and (2) modifying ALL system messages to use Unicode.
351 In particular, WM_CHAR messages, which result from keyboard input,
352 will then come in encoded in UTF-16.
354 One advantage of switching to Unicode is to toss encoded-kbd usage,
355 which will solve the problem with binding non-ASCII keys with modifiers.
357 Problem: using this on Windows 9x/ME requires installing the
358 Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU), which might not implement all
359 the required functionality that is available built-in on Windows XP
360 and later. We should not make this change if it would pressure
361 users of unauthorized copies of older versions of Windows to
362 downgrade to versions that require activation.
364 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
365 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
366 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
367 where one language is embedded in another language. See
368 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
369 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches taken by others.
371 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
372 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
373 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
375 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
376 output to a different filter.
378 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
381 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops.
383 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
385 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
386 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
388 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
389 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
390 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
391 when the user tries to use the menubar.
393 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
394 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
395 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
396 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
398 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
399 significant work), PSGML, _possibly_ ECB.
400 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg01493.html
401 Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
404 ** Possibly install python-mode in place of python.el, or combine the two.
405 Someone needs to do the work of figuring out who all the non-trivial
406 python-mode.el contributors are and getting assignments.
407 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02156.html
408 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02201.html
409 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02489.html
410 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02234.html
412 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
413 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
414 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
417 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
418 an example how to do part of this; see the XMenu* functions on msdos.c.
420 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
423 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
424 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
425 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
427 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
428 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
430 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
431 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
432 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
434 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
435 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
436 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
438 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
440 ** Split out parts of lisp.h [and generate Makefile dependencies automatically.]
441 [the last bit is done, see DEPFLAGS etc in src/Makefile.in ]
445 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
446 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
448 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
449 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
450 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
451 [Do the existing -Q and -D cover this, or is more needed?]
453 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
454 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on this.]
456 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
458 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
460 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
462 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
463 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
465 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
466 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?). [does
467 doc-view.el do this, or could it be extended to do this?]
469 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
470 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
471 thought this was feasible.]
473 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
474 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
475 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
477 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
478 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
479 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
480 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
481 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
482 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
483 already for Emacs 23 and consult fx.]
485 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
486 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
487 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
489 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
492 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
494 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
495 when the body only calls primitives.
497 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
499 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
500 colors of the applicable faces.
502 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
504 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
505 or the end of the buffer.
507 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
508 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
509 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
511 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
512 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
513 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
514 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after attributes.
516 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
517 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
518 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
519 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
521 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
522 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
523 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
524 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
525 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
526 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
527 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
528 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
529 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
530 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
531 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
532 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
533 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
534 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
535 probably in separate manual.
537 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
538 the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
539 with the color used for the transparent regions.)
541 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
542 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
543 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
544 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
546 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
547 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
549 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
550 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
551 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
552 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
553 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
554 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
557 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
558 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
560 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
561 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
562 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
563 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
564 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
566 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
567 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
568 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
569 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
570 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
571 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
572 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
573 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
574 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
576 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
577 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
580 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
582 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
583 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
585 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
586 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
587 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
588 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
590 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
591 but which can also be used as a modifier).
593 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
594 Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
595 lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
597 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
599 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
600 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
602 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
604 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
606 ** Possibly add a "close" button to the modeline.
607 The idea is to add an "X" of some kind, that when clicked deletes
608 the window associated with that modeline.
609 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02416.html
611 * Things to be done for specific packages or features
617 **** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
618 up on top of all others
620 **** free_frame_resources, face colors
622 **** Numeric keysetting bug.
626 **** Open file:/// URLs.
628 **** Put frame autopositioning into C code somewhere -- if loc = same, offset.
630 **** Automap ctrl-mouse-1 to mouse-3.
632 **** Deal with Finder aliases somehow.
634 **** Ctrl-F2 won't pull up menus.
636 *** Other / Low Priority:
638 **** Better recognition of unicode scripts / Greek / composition.
640 **** Undo for color-drag face customization.
642 ** Bidirectional editing
644 *** Allow the user to control the direction of the UI
646 **** Introduce user option to control direction of mode line.
647 This requires to figure out what to do with unibyte strings that are
648 used in constructing the mode line. Currently, unibyte strings are
649 not reordered by bidi.c, without which R2L mode line will not display
650 correctly. One possibility would be to STRING_SET_MULTIBYTE all Lisp
651 strings involved in the mode line, and then pass them through bidi.c.
653 Another problem is the header line, which is produced by the same
654 routines as the mode line. While it makes sense to have the mode-line
655 direction controlled by a single global variable, header lines are
656 buffer-specific, so they need a separate treatment in this regard.
658 **** User options to control direction of menu bar and tool bar.
659 For the tool bar, it's relatively easy: set it.paragraph_embedding
660 in redisplay_tool_bar according to the user variable, and make
661 f->desired_tool_bar_string multibyte with STRING_SET_MULTIBYTE. Some
662 minor changes will be needed to set the right_box_line_p and
663 left_box_line_p flags correctly for the R2L tool bar.
665 However, it makes no sense to display the tool bar right to left if
666 the menu bar cannot be displayed in the same direction.
668 R2L menu bar is tricky for the same reasons as the mode line. In
669 addition, toolkit builds create their menu bars in toolkit-specific
670 parts of code, bypassing xdisp.c, so those parts need to be enhanced
671 with toolkit-specific code to display the menu bar right to left.
673 ** ImageMagick support
675 *** image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
676 ImageMagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
677 prefering the ImageMagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in jpegs.
679 Try (setq image-type-header-regexps nil) for a quick hack to prefer
680 ImageMagick over the jpg loader.
682 *** For some reason its unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
683 image bundle using the :index feature. The ImageMagick "display"
684 command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the Emacs
685 code. It seems ImageMagick tries to unpack every page when loading the
686 bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase in Emacs though.
688 ImageMagick 6.6.2-9 introduced a bugfix for single page djvu load. It
689 is now much faster to use the :index feature, but still not very fast.
691 *** Try to cache the num pages calculation. It can take a while to
692 calculate the number of pages, and if you need to do it for each page
693 view, page-flipping becomes uselessly slow.
695 *** Integrate with image-dired.
697 *** Integrate with docview.
699 *** Integrate with image-mode.
700 Some work has been done, e.g. M-x image-transform-fit-to-height will
701 fit the image to the height of the Emacs window.
703 *** Look for optimizations for handling images with low depth.
704 Currently the code seems to default to 24 bit RGB which is costly for
705 images with lower bit depth.
707 *** Decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
708 functions for image size etc.
710 *** Test with more systems.
711 Tested on Fedora 12, 14, and the libmagick that ships with it.
712 I also tried using an ImageMagick compiled from their SVN, in
713 parallel with the one packaged by Fedora, it worked well.
714 Ubuntu 8.04 was tested, but it seems it ships a broken ImageMagick.
720 **** Command to insert an element template, including all required
721 attributes and child elements. When there's a choice of elements
722 possible, we could insert a comment, and put an overlay on that
723 comment that makes it behave like a button with a pop-up menu to
724 select the appropriate choice.
726 **** Command to tag a region. With a schema should complete using legal
727 tags, but should work without a schema as well.
729 **** Provide a way to conveniently rename an element. With a schema should
730 complete using legal tags, but should work without a schema as well.
734 **** Implement C-c C-o C-q.
736 **** Install pre/post command hook for moving out of invisible section.
738 **** Put a modify hook on invisible sections that expands them.
740 **** Integrate dumb folding somehow.
742 **** An element should be able to be its own heading.
744 **** Optimize to avoid complete buffer scan on each command.
746 **** Make it work with HTML-style headings (i.e. level indicated by
747 name of heading element rather than depth of section nesting).
749 **** Recognize root element as a section provided it has a title, even
750 if it doesn't match section-element-name-regex.
752 **** Support for incremental search automatically making hidden text visible.
754 **** Allow title to be an attribute.
756 **** Command that says to recognize the tag at point as a section/heading.
758 **** Explore better ways to determine when an element is a section
761 **** rng-next-error needs to either ignore invisible portion or reveal it
762 (maybe use isearch oriented text properties).
764 **** Errors within hidden section should be highlighted by underlining the
767 **** Make indirect buffers work.
769 **** How should nxml-refresh outline recover from non well-formed tags?
771 **** Hide tags in title elements?
773 **** Use overlays instead of text properties for holding outline state?
774 Necessary for indirect buffers to work?
776 **** Allow an outline to go in the speedbar.
778 **** Split up outlining manual section into subsections.
780 **** More detail in the manual about each outlining command.
782 **** More menu entries for hiding/showing?
784 **** Indication of many lines have been hidden?
788 **** Should rng-validate-mode give the user an opportunity to specify a
789 schema if there is currently none? Or should it at least give a hint
790 to the user how to specify a non-vacuous schema?
792 **** Support for adding new schemas to schema-locating files.
793 Add documentElement and namespace elements.
795 **** C-c C-w should be able to report current type id.
797 **** Implement doctypePublicId.
799 **** Implement typeIdBase.
801 **** Implement typeIdProcessingInstruction.
803 **** Support xml:base.
805 **** Implement group.
807 **** Find preferred prefix from schema-locating files. Get rid of
808 rng-preferred-prefix-alist.
810 **** Inserting document element with vacuous schema should complete using
811 document elements declared in schema locating files, and set schema
814 **** Add a ruleType attribute to the <include> element?
816 **** Allow processing instruction in prolog to contain the compact syntax
819 **** Use RDDL to locate a schema based on the namespace URI.
821 **** Should not prompt to add redundant association to schema locating file.
823 **** Command to reload current schema.
825 *** Schema-sensitive features
827 **** Should filter dynamic markup possibilities using schema validity, by
828 adding hook to nxml-mode.
830 **** Dynamic markup word should (at least optionally) be able to look in
831 other buffers that are using nxml-mode.
833 **** Should clicking on Invalid move to next error if already on an error?
835 **** Take advantage of a:documentation. Needs change to schema format.
837 **** Provide feasible validation (as in Jing) toggle.
839 **** Save the validation state as a property on the error overlay to enable
840 more detailed diagnosis.
842 **** Provide an Error Summary buffer showing all the validation errors.
844 **** Pop-up menu. What is useful? Tag a region (should be greyed out if
845 the region is not balanced). Suggestions based on error messages.
847 **** Have configurable list of namespace URIs so that we can provide
848 namespace URI completion on extension elements or with schema-less documents.
850 **** Allow validation to handle XInclude.
852 **** ID/IDREF support.
856 **** Make it work with icomplete. Only use a function to complete when
857 some of the possible names have undeclared namespaces.
859 **** How should C-return in mixed text work?
861 **** When there's a vacuous schema, C-return after < will insert the end-tag.
862 Is this a bug or a feature?
864 **** After completing start-tag, ensure we don't get unhelpful message
867 **** Syntax table for completion.
869 **** Should complete start-tag name with a space if namespace attributes
872 **** When completing start-tag name with no prefix and it doesn't match
873 should try to infer namespace from local name.
875 **** Should completion pay attention to characters after point? If so, how?
877 **** When completing start-tag name, add required atts if only one required
880 **** When completing attribute name, add attribute value if only one value
883 **** After attribute-value completion, insert space after close delimiter
884 if more attributes are required.
886 **** Complete on enumerated data values in elements.
888 **** When in context that allows only elements, should get tag
889 completion without having to type < first.
891 **** When immediately after start-tag name, and name is valid and not
892 prefix of any other name, should C-return complete on attribute names?
894 **** When completing attributes, more consistent to ignore all attributes
897 **** Inserting attribute value completions needs to be sensitive to what
898 delimiter is used so that it quotes the correct character.
900 **** Complete on encoding-names in XML decl.
902 **** Complete namespace declarations by searching for all namespaces
903 mentioned in the schema.
905 *** Well-formed XML support
907 **** Deal better with Mule-UCS
909 **** Deal with UTF-8 BOM when reading.
911 **** Complete entity names.
913 **** Provide some support for entity names for MathML.
915 **** Command to repeat the last tag.
917 **** Support for changing between character references and characters.
918 Need to check that context is one in which character references are
919 allowed. xmltok prolog parsing will need to distinguish parameter
920 literals from other kinds of literal.
922 **** Provide a comment command to bind to M-; that works better than the
925 **** Make indenting in a multi-line comment work.
927 **** Structure view. Separate buffer displaying element tree.
928 Be able to navigate from structure view to document and vice-versa.
930 **** Flash matching >.
932 **** Smart selection command that selects increasingly large syntactically
933 coherent chunks of XML. If point is in an attribute value, first
934 select complete value; then if command is repeated, select value plus
935 delimiters, then select attribute name as well, then complete
936 start-tag, then complete element, then enclosing element, etc.
938 **** ispell integration.
940 **** Block-level items in mixed content should be indented, e.g:
945 **** Provide option to indent like this:
946 <para>This is a paragraph
947 occupying multiple lines.</para>
949 **** Option to add make a / that closes a start-tag electrically insert a
950 space for the XHTML guys.
952 **** C-M-q should work.
956 **** Figure out workaround for CJK characters with regexps.
958 **** Does category C contain Cn?
960 **** Do ENTITY datatype properly.
962 *** XML Parsing Library
964 **** Parameter entity parsing option, nil (never), t (always),
965 unless-standalone (unless standalone="yes" in XML declaration).
967 **** When a file is currently being edited, there should be an option to
968 use its buffer instead of the on-disk copy.
970 *** Handling all XML features
972 **** Provide better support for editing external general parsed entities.
973 Perhaps provide a way to force ignoring undefined entities; maybe turn
974 this on automatically with <?xml encoding=""?> (with no version
977 **** Handle internal general entity declarations containing elements.
979 **** Handle external general entity declarations.
981 **** Handle default attribute declarations in internal subset.
983 **** Handle parameter entities (including DTD).
987 **** Do complete schema checking, at least optionally.
989 **** Detect include/external loops during schema parse.
991 **** Coding system detection for schemas. Should use utf-8/utf-16 per the
992 spec. But also need to allow encodings other than UTF-8/16 to support
993 CJK charsets that Emacs cannot represent in Unicode.
995 *** Catching XML errors
997 **** Check public identifiers.
999 **** Check default attribute values.
1003 **** Explore whether overlay-recenter can cure overlays performance problems.
1005 **** Cache schemas. Need to have list of files and mtimes.
1007 **** Make it possible to reduce rng-validate-chunk-size significantly,
1008 perhaps to 500 bytes, without bad performance impact: don't do
1009 redisplay on every chunk; pass continue functions on other uses of
1010 rng-do-some-validation.
1012 **** Cache after first tag.
1014 **** Introduce a new name class that is a choice between names (so that
1017 **** intern-choice should simplify after patterns with same 1st/2nd args
1019 **** Large numbers of overlays slow things down dramatically. Represent
1020 errors using text properties. This implies we cannot incrementally
1021 keep track of the number of errors, in order to determine validity.
1022 Instead, when validation completes, scan for any characters with an
1023 error text property; this seems to be fast enough even with large
1024 buffers. Problem with error at end of buffer, where there's no
1025 character; need special variable for this. Need to merge face from
1026 font-lock with the error face: use :inherit attribute with list of two
1027 faces. How do we avoid making rng-valid depend on nxml-mode?
1031 **** Don't stop at newline in looking for close of start-tag.
1033 **** Use indentation to guide recovery from mismatched end-tags
1035 **** Don't keep parsing when currently not well-formed but previously
1038 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag by popping an open element if
1039 there was a mismatched end-tag unaccounted for.
1041 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag open on the hypothesis that there
1042 was an error in the namespace URI.
1044 **** Better recovery from ill-formed XML declarations.
1046 *** Usability improvements
1048 **** Should print a "Parsing..." message during long movements.
1050 **** Provide better position for reference to undefined pattern error.
1052 **** Put Well-formed in the mode-line when validating against any-content.
1054 **** Trim marking of illegal data for leading and trailing whitespace.
1056 **** Show Invalid status as soon as we are sure it's invalid, rather than
1057 waiting for everything to be completely up to date.
1059 **** When narrowed, Valid or Invalid status should probably consider only
1060 validity of narrowed region.
1064 **** Need to give an error for a document like: <foo/><![CDATA[ ]]>
1066 **** Make nxml-forward-balanced-item work better for the prolog.
1068 **** Make filling and indenting comments work in the prolog.
1070 **** Should delete RNC Input buffers.
1072 **** Figure out what regex use for NCName and use it consistently,
1074 **** Should have not-well-formed tokens in ref.
1076 **** Require version in XML declaration? Probably not because prevents
1077 use for external parsed entities. At least forbid standalone without version.
1079 **** Reject schema that compiles to rng-not-allowed-ipattern.
1081 **** Move point backwards on schema parse error so that it's on the right token.
1085 **** Use rng-quote-string consistently.
1087 **** Use parsing library for XML to texinfo conversion.
1089 **** Rename xmltok.el to nxml-token.el. Use nxml-t- prefix instead of
1090 xmltok-. Change nxml-t-type to nxml-t-token-type, nxml-t-start to
1093 **** Can we set fill-prefix to nil and rely on indenting?
1095 **** xmltok should make available replacement text of entities containing
1098 **** In rng-valid, instead of using modification-hooks and
1099 insert-behind-hooks on dependent overlays, use same technique as nxml-mode.
1101 **** Port to XEmacs. Issues include: Unicode (XEmacs seems to be based on
1102 Mule-UCS); overlays/text properties vs extents; absence of
1103 fontification-functions hook.
1107 **** Allow face to depend on element qname, attribute qname, attribute
1108 value. Use list with pairs of (R . F), where R specifies regexps and
1109 F specifies faces. How can this list be made to depend on the document type?
1113 **** Support RELAX NG XML syntax (use XML parsing library).
1115 **** Support W3C XML Schema (use XML parsing library).
1117 **** Command to infer schema from current document (like trang).
1121 **** XSLT schema should take advantage of RELAX NG to express cooccurrence
1122 constraints on attributes (e.g. xsl:template).
1126 **** Move material from README to manual.
1128 **** Document encodings.
1132 **** How can we allow an error to be displayed on a different token from
1133 where it is detected? In particular, for a missing closing ">" we
1134 will need to display it at the beginning of the following token. At the
1135 moment, when we parse the following token the error overlay will get cleared.
1137 **** How should rng-goto-next-error deal with narrowing?
1139 **** Perhaps should merge errors having same start position even if they
1140 have different ends.
1142 **** How to handle surrogates? One possibility is to be compatible with
1143 utf8.e: represent as sequence of 4 chars. But utf-16 is incompatible
1146 **** Should we distinguish well-formedness errors from invalidity errors?
1147 (I think not: we may want to recover from a bad start-tag by implying
1150 **** Seems to be a bug with Emacs, where a mouse movement that causes
1151 help-echo text to appear counts as pending input but does not cause
1152 idle timer to be restarted.
1154 **** Use XML to represent this file.
1156 **** I had a TODO which said simply "split-string". What did I mean?
1158 **** Investigate performance on large files all on one line.
1160 *** Issues for Emacs versions >= 22
1162 **** Take advantage of UTF-8 CJK support.
1164 **** Supply a next-error-function.
1166 **** Investigate this NEWS item "Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding
1167 systems for HTML/XML files automatically."
1169 **** Take advantage of the pointer text property.
1171 **** Leverage char-displayable-p.
1175 ** Cleanup all the GC_ mark bit stuff -- there is no longer any distinction
1176 since the mark bit is no longer stored in the Lisp_Object itself.
1178 ** Refine the `predicate' arg to read-file-name.
1179 Currently, it mixes up the predicate to apply when doing completion and the
1180 one to use when terminating the selection.
1182 ** Merge ibuffer.el and buff-menu.el.
1183 More specifically do what's needed to make ibuffer.el the default,
1184 or just an extension of buff-menu.el.
1186 ** Use pcomplete by default in shell-mode.
1187 This means to make it behave (by default) more like the current code.
1188 Use it also for read-shell-command, M-x compile, ...
1190 ** Merge sendmail.el and messages.el.
1191 Probably not a complete merge, but at least arrange for messages.el to be
1192 a derived mode of sendmail.el. Or arrange for messages.el to be split
1193 into a small core and "the rest" so that we use less resources as long as
1194 we stick to the features provided in sendmail.el.
1196 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
1197 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
1198 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
1201 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
1203 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
1204 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
1205 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
1206 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
1207 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
1209 ** Make SYNC_INPUT the default. [true since 2008-03-11]
1210 All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
1211 C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
1212 switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
1213 allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
1216 ** Add "link" button class
1217 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
1218 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
1219 class to the standard "link" face.
1223 ** `make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
1225 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
1226 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
1228 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
1229 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
1232 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1234 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1235 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1236 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1237 (at your option) any later version.
1239 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1240 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1241 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1242 GNU General Public License for more details.
1244 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1245 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.