1 Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
3 Copyright (C) 2001-2013 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), though 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 :-(
28 ** Random things that cross my mind right now that I'd like to see (some of
29 them from my local hacks), but it's not obvious at all whether they'll
31 *** multiple inheritance for keymaps (to get rid of the
32 fix_submap_inheritance hack and to more cleanly express the
33 relationship between minibuffer-local-*-map): I've had this locally
34 for a long time, but the details of the semantics is somewhat ... delicate.
35 *** prog-mode could/should provide a better fill-paragraph default
36 that uses syntax-tables to recognize string/comment boundaries.
37 *** provide more completion-at-point-functions. Make existing
38 in-buffer completion use completion-at-point.
39 *** "functional" function-key-map that would make it easy to add (and
40 remove) mappings like "FOO-mouse-4 -> FOO-scroll-down",
41 "FOO-tab -> ?\FOO-\t", "uppercase -> lowercase", "[fringe KEY...] ->
42 [KEY]", "H-FOO -> M-FOO", "C-x C-y FOO -> H-FOO", ...
45 * Simple tasks. These don't require much Emacs knowledge, they are
46 suitable for anyone from beginners to experts.
48 ** Convert modes that use view-mode to be derived from special-mode instead.
50 ** Major modes should have a menu entry. Examples of modes that do
51 not have one at the moment and probably should: text-mode, inferior-lisp-mode.
53 ** Check if all items on the mode-line have a suitable tooltip for all modes.
55 ** edebug and debugger-mode should have a toolbar.
56 It can use the same icons as gud.
58 ** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
61 ** Convert all defvars with leading `*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
62 of appropriate :type and :group.
64 ** Remove any leading `*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
66 ** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
67 This needs a bit of care, since often people have become used to
68 expecting such variables to always be defined, eg when they modify
69 things in their .emacs.
71 ** See if other files can use generated-autoload-file (see eg ps-print).
73 ** Write more tests. Pick a fixed bug from the database, write a test
74 case to make sure it stays fixed. Or pick your favorite programming
75 major-mode, and write a test for its indentation. Or a version
76 control backend, and write a test for its status parser. Etc.
77 See test/automated for examples.
79 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
81 ** Flymake's customization mechanism needs to be both simpler (fewer
82 levels of indirection) and better documented, so it is easier to
83 understand. I find it quite hard to figure out what compilation
86 I suggest totally rewriting that part of Flymake, using the simplest
87 mechanism that suffices for the specific needs. That will be easy
88 for users to customize.
90 ** Compute the list of active keymaps *after* reading the first event.
92 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
93 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
95 ** buffer-offer-save should be a permanent local.
97 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
98 For related problems consult the thread starting with
99 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01346.html
101 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
103 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
104 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
105 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
106 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
107 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
109 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
110 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
111 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
113 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
116 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
117 variables whose values are currently hidden.
119 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
120 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
121 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
122 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
124 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
126 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
127 using a heuristic of some kind?
129 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
130 See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
132 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
133 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
134 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
135 without menu and tool bar lines.
137 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
138 and they should create Custom buffers.
140 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
142 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
144 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
145 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
146 recording which file the latest definition came from.
148 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
150 ** Consider improving src/sysdep.c's search for a fqdn.
151 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00782.html
153 ** Find a proper fix for rcirc multiline nick adding.
154 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00684.html
156 ** Implement `network-interface-list' and `network-interface-info'
157 on MS-Windows. Hint: the information is present in the Registry,
159 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Linkage\
161 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<device>\
162 where <device> is the network device found under the first key.
164 ** Check for any included packages that define obsolete bug-reporting commands.
165 Change them to use report-emacs-bug.
167 ** Allow fringe indicators to display a tooltip (provide a help-echo property?)
169 ** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
170 like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
172 ** `dired-mode' should specify the semantics of `buffer-modified-p' for
173 dired buffers and DTRT WRT `auto-revert-mode'.
175 ** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
176 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
178 * Important features:
179 ** Extended text-properties (to make overlays "obsolete")
180 *** Several text-property planes
181 This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
182 get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
183 simply use the `face' property in the `font-lock' plane.
184 Each property would come with an Elisp merge-function. The merge
185 would be performed in add-text-properties.
186 *** zero-width text-properties.
187 ** Having tabs above a window to switch buffers in it.
189 ** "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations. We have
190 had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
191 beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
192 advantage of them. Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.
194 Perspectives work well even if you do the equivalent of C-x 4 C-f
195 because of the distinction between view windows vs file windows. In
196 Emacs this is more or less the "dedicated window" feature, but we have
197 never really made it work for this.
199 Perspectives also need to interact with the tabs.
201 ** Imenu could be extended into a file-structure browsing mechanism
202 using code like that of customize-groups.
204 ** Display something in the margin on lines that have compilation errors.
206 ** Compilation error navigation bar, parallel to the scroll bar,
207 indicating where in the buffer there are compilation errors.
208 Perhaps we could arrange to display these error indications on top
209 of the scroll bar itself. That depends on to what extent toolkit
210 scroll bars are extensible.
212 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
213 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
214 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
216 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
218 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
220 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
221 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
222 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
223 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
226 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
227 properly with variable-pitch faces.
229 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
230 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
231 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
233 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
234 (see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/clustering/chi04.pdf).
236 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
237 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
238 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
239 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
240 same value of this property.
241 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
243 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
245 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
246 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
248 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
250 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
251 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
252 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
254 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
255 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
257 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
258 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
259 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
260 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
261 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
262 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
263 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
264 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
265 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
267 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
268 be only full columns/lines.
270 * Other features we would like:
272 ** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
273 from the emacsclient process.
274 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
275 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
277 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
279 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
280 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
282 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
283 and put some other errors under it.
285 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
286 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
288 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
290 ** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
292 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
293 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
294 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
295 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
296 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
298 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
299 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
300 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
301 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
302 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
303 customization buffers.
305 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
306 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
307 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
308 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
309 use to view the advice.
311 ** Add a function to get the insertion-type of the markers in an overlay.
315 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status messages.
317 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
319 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
320 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
321 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
322 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
324 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
325 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
326 *** nested string-delimiters (for PostScript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
327 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
328 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
329 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
330 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
331 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
332 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
334 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
336 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
337 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
338 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
340 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
341 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
342 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
343 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
345 ** Switch the Windows port to using Unicode keyboard input (maybe).
346 Based on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633586.aspx,
347 this boils down to (1) calling RegisterClassW function to register
348 Emacs windows, and (2) modifying ALL system messages to use Unicode.
349 In particular, WM_CHAR messages, which result from keyboard input,
350 will then come in encoded in UTF-16.
352 One advantage of switching to Unicode is to toss encoded-kbd usage,
353 which will solve the problem with binding non-ASCII keys with modifiers.
355 Problem: using this on Windows 9x/ME requires installing the
356 Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU), which might not implement all
357 the required functionality that is available built-in on Windows XP
358 and later. We should not make this change if it would pressure
359 users of unauthorized copies of older versions of Windows to
360 downgrade to versions that require activation.
362 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
363 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
364 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
365 where one language is embedded in another language. See
366 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
367 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches taken by others.
369 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
370 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
371 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
373 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
374 output to a different filter.
376 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
379 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops.
381 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
383 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
384 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
386 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
387 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
388 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
389 when the user tries to use the menubar.
391 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
392 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
393 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
394 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
396 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
397 significant work), PSGML, _possibly_ ECB.
398 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg01493.html
399 Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
402 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
403 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
404 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
407 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
408 an example how to do part of this; see the XMenu* functions on msdos.c.
410 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
411 macros in cl-macs. [Is this still relevant now that cl-lib exists?]
413 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
414 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
415 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
417 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
418 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
420 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
421 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
422 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
424 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
426 ** Split out parts of lisp.h.
430 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
431 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
433 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
434 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
435 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
436 [Do the existing -Q and -D cover this, or is more needed?]
438 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
439 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on this.]
441 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
443 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
445 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
447 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
448 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
450 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
451 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?). [does
452 doc-view.el do this, or could it be extended to do this?
453 Does ImageMagick obsolete this idea?]
455 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
456 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
457 thought this was feasible.]
459 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
460 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
461 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
463 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
464 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
465 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
466 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
467 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
468 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
469 already for Emacs 23 and consult fx.]
471 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
472 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
473 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
475 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
478 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
480 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
481 when the body only calls primitives.
483 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
485 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
486 colors of the applicable faces.
488 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
490 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
491 or the end of the buffer.
493 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
494 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
495 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
497 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
498 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
499 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
500 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after attributes.
502 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
503 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
504 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
505 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
507 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
508 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
509 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
510 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
511 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit,
512 makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
513 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
514 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
515 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
516 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt,
517 feedmail [?], uce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
518 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
519 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, xml,
520 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
521 probably in separate manual.
523 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
524 the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
525 with the color used for the transparent regions.)
527 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
528 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
529 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
530 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
532 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
533 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
535 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
536 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
537 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
538 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
539 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
540 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
543 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
544 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
546 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
547 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
548 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
549 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
550 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
552 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
553 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
554 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
555 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
556 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
557 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
558 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
559 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
560 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
562 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
563 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
566 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
568 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
569 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
571 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
572 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
573 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
574 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
576 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
577 but which can also be used as a modifier).
579 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
580 Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
581 lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
583 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
585 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
586 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
588 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
590 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
592 ** Possibly add a "close" button to the modeline.
593 The idea is to add an "X" of some kind, that when clicked deletes
594 the window associated with that modeline.
595 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02416.html
597 * Things to be done for specific packages or features
603 **** The event loop does not redraw.
604 A problem is that redraw don't happen during resize,
605 because we can't break out from the NSapp loop during resize.
606 There was a special trick to detect mouse press in the lower right
607 corner and track mouse movements, but this did not work well, and was
608 not scalable to the new Lion "resize on every window edge" behavior.
609 [As of trunk r109635, 2012-08-15, the event loop no longer polls.]
611 **** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
612 up on top of all others
614 **** free_frame_resources, face colors
616 **** Numeric keysetting bug.
620 **** Open file:/// URLs.
622 **** Put frame autopositioning into C code somewhere -- if loc = same, offset.
624 **** Automap ctrl-mouse-1 to mouse-3.
626 **** Deal with Finder aliases somehow.
628 **** Ctrl-F2 won't pull up menus.
630 *** Other / Low Priority:
632 **** Better recognition of Unicode scripts / Greek / composition.
634 **** Undo for color-drag face customization.
636 ** Bidirectional editing
638 *** Support reordering structured text
639 Two important use cases: (1) comments and strings in program sources,
640 and (2) text with markup, like HTML or XML.
642 One idea is to invent a special text property that would instruct the
643 display engine to reorder only the parts of buffer text covered by
644 that property. The display engine will then push its state onto the
645 iterator stack, restrict the bidi iterator to accessing only the
646 portion of buffer text covered by the property, reorder the text, then
647 pop its state from stack and continue as usual. This will require
648 minor changes in the bidi_it structure.
650 This design requires Lisp-level code to put the text properties on the
651 relevant parts of the buffer text. That could be done using JIT
652 fontifications, or as a preliminary processing when the file is
653 visited. With HTML/XML, the code that puts text properties needs to
654 pay attention to the bidi directives embedded in the HTML/XML stream.
656 *** Allow the user to control the direction of the UI
658 **** Introduce user option to control direction of mode line.
659 One problem is the header line, which is produced by the same routines
660 as the mode line. While it makes sense to have the mode-line
661 direction controlled by a single global variable, header lines are
662 buffer-specific, so they need a separate treatment in this regard.
664 **** User options to control direction of menu bar and tool bar.
665 For the tool bar, it's relatively easy: set it.paragraph_embedding
666 in redisplay_tool_bar according to the user variable, and make
667 f->desired_tool_bar_string multibyte with STRING_SET_MULTIBYTE. Some
668 minor changes will be needed to set the right_box_line_p and
669 left_box_line_p flags correctly for the R2L tool bar.
671 However, it makes no sense to display the tool bar right to left if
672 the menu bar cannot be displayed in the same direction.
674 R2L menu bar is tricky for the same reasons as the mode line. In
675 addition, toolkit builds create their menu bars in toolkit-specific
676 parts of code, bypassing xdisp.c, so those parts need to be enhanced
677 with toolkit-specific code to display the menu bar right to left.
679 ** ImageMagick support
681 *** image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
682 ImageMagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
683 preferring the ImageMagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in jpegs.
685 Try (setq image-type-header-regexps nil) for a quick hack to prefer
686 ImageMagick over the jpg loader.
688 *** For some reason its unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
689 image bundle using the :index feature. The ImageMagick "display"
690 command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the Emacs
691 code. It seems ImageMagick tries to unpack every page when loading the
692 bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase in Emacs though.
694 ImageMagick 6.6.2-9 introduced a bugfix for single page djvu load. It
695 is now much faster to use the :index feature, but still not very fast.
697 *** Try to cache the num pages calculation. It can take a while to
698 calculate the number of pages, and if you need to do it for each page
699 view, page-flipping becomes uselessly slow.
701 *** Integrate with image-dired.
703 *** Integrate with docview.
705 *** Integrate with image-mode.
706 Some work has been done, e.g. M-x image-transform-fit-to-height will
707 fit the image to the height of the Emacs window.
709 *** Look for optimizations for handling images with low depth.
710 Currently the code seems to default to 24 bit RGB which is costly for
711 images with lower bit depth.
713 *** Decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
714 functions for image size etc.
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 grayed 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.
1202 It might be better to replace it with Lisp, using the byte compiler.
1203 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-06/msg00037.html
1205 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
1206 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
1207 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
1208 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
1209 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
1211 ** Add "link" button class
1212 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
1213 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
1214 class to the standard "link" face.
1218 ** Maybe replace etags.c with a Lisp implementation.
1219 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-06/msg00354.html
1221 ** Maybe replace lib-src/rcs2log with a Lisp implementation.
1222 It wouldn't have to be a complete replacement, just enough
1223 for vc-rcs-update-changelog.
1227 ** `make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
1229 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
1230 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
1232 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
1233 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
1236 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1238 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1239 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1240 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1241 (at your option) any later version.
1243 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1244 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1245 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1246 GNU General Public License for more details.
1248 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1249 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.