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
17 ** lexbind: I haven't checked the status of the code recently, so
18 I don't know how realistic it is to include it. But it's been around
19 for a long time, and I trust Miles, so I have hope.
20 ** concurrency: including it as an "experimental" compile-time option
21 sounds good. Of course there might still be big questions around
22 "which form of concurrency" we'll want.
23 ** Overhaul of customize: sounds wonderful.
24 ** some kind of color-theme: agreed.
25 ** better support for dynamic embedded graphics: I like this idea (my
26 mpc.el code could use it for the volume widget), tho I wonder if the
27 resulting efficiency will be sufficient.
29 ** Improve the "code snippets" support: consolidate skeleton.el, tempo.el,
30 and expand.el (any other?) and then advertise/use/improve it.
31 ** Improve VC: yes, there's a lot of work to be done there :-(
32 And most of it could/should make it into Emacs-23.3.
35 ** Random things that cross my mind right now that I'd like to see (some of
36 them from my local hacks), but it's not obvious at all whether they'll
38 *** multiple inheritance for keymaps (to get rid of the
39 fix_submap_inheritance hack and to more cleanly express the
40 relationship between minibuffer-local-*-map): I've had this locally
41 for a long time, but the details of the semantics is somewhat ... delicate.
42 *** prog-mode could/should provide a better fill-paragraph default
43 that uses syntax-tables to recognize string/comment boundaries.
44 *** provide more completion-at-point-functions. Make existing
45 in-buffer completion use completion-at-point.
46 *** "functional" function-key-map that would make it easy to add (and
47 remove) mappings like "FOO-mouse-4 -> FOO-scroll-down",
48 "FOO-tab -> ?\FOO-\t", "uppercase -> lowercase", "[fringe KEY...] ->
49 [KEY]", "H-FOO -> M-FOO", "C-x C-y FOO -> H-FOO", ...
52 * Simple tasks. These don't require much Emacs knowledge, they are
53 suitable for anyone from beginners to experts.
55 ** Convert modes that use view-mode to be derived from special-mode instead.
57 ** Major modes should have a menu entry. Examples of modes that do
58 not have one at the moment and probably should: text-mode, inferior-lisp-mode.
60 ** Check if all items on the mode-line have a suitable tooltip for all modes.
62 ** edebug and debugger-mode should have a toolbar.
63 It can use the same icons as gud.
65 ** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
68 ** Convert all defvars with leading `*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
69 of appropriate :type and :group.
71 ** Remove any leading `*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
73 ** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
74 This needs a bit of care, since often people have become used to
75 expecting such variables to always be defined, eg when they modify
76 things in their .emacs.
78 ** See if other files can use generated-autoload-file (see eg ps-print).
80 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
82 ** Flymake's customization mechanism needs to be both simpler (fewer
83 levels of indirection) and better documented, so it is easier to
84 understand. I find it quite hard to figure out what compilation
87 I suggest totally rewriting that part of Flymake, using the simplest
88 mechanism that sufficies for the specific needs. That will be easy
89 for users to customize.
91 ** Compute the list of active keymaps *after* reading the first event.
93 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
94 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
96 ** buffer-offer-save should be a permanent local.
98 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
99 For related problems consult the thread starting with
100 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01346.html
102 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
104 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
105 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
106 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
107 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
108 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
110 ** Change the way define-minor-mode handles autoloading.
111 It should not generate :require. Or :require in defcustom
112 should not be recorded in the user's custom-set-variables call.
114 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
117 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
118 variables whose values are currently hidden.
120 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
121 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
122 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
123 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
125 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
127 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
128 using a heuristic of some kind?
130 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
131 See rms message of 11 Dec 05.
133 ** Height returned by frame-parameter ... and height given to
134 make-frame does not mean the same thing. The former includes menu and
135 tool bar lines, the latter don't. frame-parameter should return height
136 without menu and tool bar lines.
138 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
139 and they should create Custom buffers.
141 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
143 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
145 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
146 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
147 recording which file the latest definition came from.
149 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
151 ** Consider improving src/sysdep.c's search for a fqdn.
152 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00782.html
154 ** Find a proper fix for rcirc multiline nick adding.
155 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00684.html
157 ** Implement `network-interface-list' and `network-interface-info'
158 on MS-Windows. Hint: the information is present in the Registry,
160 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Linkage\
162 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<device>\
163 where <device> is the network device found under the first key.
165 ** Check for any included packages that define obsolete bug-reporting commands.
166 Change them to use report-emacs-bug.
168 ** Allow fringe indicators to display a tooltip (provide a help-echo property?)
170 ** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
171 like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
173 ** `dired-mode' should specify the semantics of `buffer-modified-p' for
174 dired buffers and DTRT WRT `auto-revert-mode'.
176 ** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
177 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
179 * Important features:
180 ** Extended text-properties (to make overlays "obsolete")
181 *** Several text-property planes
182 This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
183 get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
184 simply use the `face' property in the `font-lock' plane.
185 Each property would come with an Elisp merge-function. The merge
186 would be performed in add-text-properties.
187 *** zero-width text-properties.
188 ** Having tabs above a window to switch buffers in it.
190 ** "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations. We have
191 had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
192 beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
193 advantage of them. Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.
195 Perspectives work well even if you do the equivalent of C-x 4 C-f
196 because of the distinction between view windows vs file windows. In
197 Emacs this is more or less the "dedicated window" feature, but we have
198 never really made it work for this.
200 Perspectives also need to interact with the tabs.
202 ** Imenu could be extended into a file-structure browsing mechanism
203 using code like that of customize-groups.
205 ** Display something in the margin on lines that have compilation errors.
207 ** Compilation error navigation bar, parallel to the scroll bar,
208 indicating where in the buffer there are compilation errors.
209 Perhaps we could arrange to display these error indications on top
210 of the scroll bar itself. That depends on to what extent toolkit
211 scroll bars are extensible.
213 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
214 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
215 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
217 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
219 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
221 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
222 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
223 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
224 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
227 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
228 properly with variable-pitch faces.
230 ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
231 C-v to scroll through a tall image. The primitive operations
232 posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y should now make it doable in elisp.
234 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
235 (see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/clustering/chi04.pdf).
237 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
238 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
239 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
240 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
241 same value of this property.
242 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
244 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
246 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
247 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
249 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
251 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
252 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
253 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
255 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
256 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
258 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
259 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
260 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
261 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
262 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
263 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
264 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
265 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
266 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
268 ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
269 be only full columns/lines.
271 * Other features we would like:
273 ** Make longlines-mode wrap lines based on screen position instead
274 of character position, so that variable-width fonts can be handled
277 ** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
278 from the emacsclient process.
279 ** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
280 rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
282 ** Create a category of errors called `user-error' for errors which are
283 typically due to pilot errors and should thus be in debug-ignored-errors.
285 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
287 ** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
288 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
290 ** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
291 and put some other errors under it.
293 ** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
294 See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
296 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
298 ** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
300 ** A function to check for customizable options that have been
301 set but not saved, and ask the user whether to save them.
302 This could go in kill-emacs-query-functions, to remind people
303 to save their changes. If the user says yes, show them
304 in a Custom buffer using customize-customized.
306 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
307 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
308 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
309 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
310 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
311 customization buffers.
313 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
314 function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
315 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
316 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
317 use to view the advice.
319 ** Add a function to get the insertion-type of the markers in an overlay.
323 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status messages.
325 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
327 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
328 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
329 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
330 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
332 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
333 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
334 *** nested string-delimiters (for Postscript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
335 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
336 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
337 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
338 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
339 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
340 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
342 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
344 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
345 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
346 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
348 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
349 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
350 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
351 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
353 ** Switch the Windows port to using Unicode keyboard input (maybe).
354 Based on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633586.aspx,
355 this boils down to (1) calling RegisterClassW function to register
356 Emacs windows, and (2) modifying ALL system messages to use Unicode.
357 In particular, WM_CHAR messages, which result from keyboard input,
358 will then come in encoded in UTF-16.
360 One advantage of switching to Unicode is to toss encoded-kbd usage,
361 which will solve the problem with binding non-ASCII keys with modifiers.
363 Problem: using this on Windows 9x/ME requires installing the
364 Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU), which might not implement all
365 the required functionality that is available built-in on Windows XP
366 and later. We should not make this change if it would pressure
367 users of unauthorized copies of older versions of Windows to
368 downgrade to versions that require activation.
370 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
371 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
372 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
373 where one language is embedded in another language. See
374 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
375 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches taken by others.
377 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
378 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
379 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
381 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
382 output to a different filter.
384 ** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
387 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops.
389 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
391 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
392 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
394 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
395 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
396 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
397 when the user tries to use the menubar.
399 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
400 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
401 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
402 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
404 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
405 significant work), PSGML, _possibly_ ECB.
406 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg01493.html
407 Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
410 ** Possibly install python-mode in place of python.el, or combine the two.
411 Someone needs to do the work of figuring out who all the non-trivial
412 python-mode.el contributors are and getting assignments.
413 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02156.html
414 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02201.html
415 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02489.html
416 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg02234.html
418 ** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
419 keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
420 multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
423 ** Provide real menus on ttys. The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
424 an example how to do part of this; see the XMenu* functions on msdos.c.
426 ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
429 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
430 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
431 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
433 ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
434 but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
436 ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library. [Maybe
437 not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions. fx looked at
438 this and can say where some of the problems are.]
440 ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
441 mismatches that we get with GCC 4.x and proprietary compilers on
442 various systems. They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
444 ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
446 ** Split out parts of lisp.h [and generate Makefile dependencies automatically.]
447 [the last bit is done, see DEPFLAGS etc in src/Makefile.in ]
451 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
452 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
454 ** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
455 ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
456 environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
457 [Do the existing -Q and -D cover this, or is more needed?]
459 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
460 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on this.]
462 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
464 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
466 ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
468 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
469 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
471 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
472 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?). [does
473 doc-view.el do this, or could it be extended to do this?]
475 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
476 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
477 thought this was feasible.]
479 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
480 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
481 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
483 ** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
484 is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
485 define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
486 (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
487 box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
488 tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
489 already for Emacs 23 and consult fx.]
491 ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
492 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
493 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
495 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
498 ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
500 ** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
501 when the body only calls primitives.
503 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
505 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
506 colors of the applicable faces.
508 ** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
510 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
511 or the end of the buffer.
513 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
514 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
515 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
517 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
518 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
519 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
520 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after attributes.
522 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
523 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
524 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
525 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
527 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
528 artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
529 completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
530 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
531 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
532 [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
533 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
534 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
535 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
536 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
537 swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
538 refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
539 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
540 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
541 probably in separate manual.
543 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
544 the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
545 with the color used for the transparent regions.)
547 ** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
548 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
549 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
550 other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
552 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
553 i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
555 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
556 `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
557 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
558 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
559 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
560 the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
563 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
564 only the variable `current-language-environment'.
566 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
567 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
568 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
569 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
570 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
572 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
573 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
574 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
575 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
576 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
577 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
578 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
579 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
580 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
582 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
583 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
586 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
588 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
589 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
591 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
592 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
593 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
594 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
596 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
597 but which can also be used as a modifier).
599 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
600 Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
601 lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
603 ** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
605 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
606 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
608 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
610 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
612 ** Possibly add a "close" button to the modeline.
613 The idea is to add an "X" of some kind, that when clicked deletes
614 the window associated with that modeline.
615 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02416.html
617 * Things to be done for specific packages or features
623 **** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
624 up on top of all others
626 **** free_frame_resources, face colors
628 **** Numeric keysetting bug.
632 **** Open file:/// URLs.
634 **** Put frame autopositioning into C code somewhere -- if loc = same, offset.
636 **** Automap ctrl-mouse-1 to mouse-3.
638 **** Deal with Finder aliases somehow.
640 **** Ctrl-F2 won't pull up menus.
642 *** Other / Low Priority:
644 **** Better recognition of unicode scripts / Greek / composition.
646 **** Undo for color-drag face customization.
648 ** ImageMagick support
650 *** image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
651 ImageMagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
652 prefering the ImageMagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in jpegs.
654 Try (setq image-type-header-regexps nil) for a quick hack to prefer
655 ImageMagick over the jpg loader.
657 *** For some reason its unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
658 image bundle using the :index feature. The ImageMagick "display"
659 command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the Emacs
660 code. It seems ImageMagick tries to unpack every page when loading the
661 bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase in Emacs though.
663 ImageMagick 6.6.2-9 introduced a bugfix for single page djvu load. It
664 is now much faster to use the :index feature, but still not very fast.
666 *** Try to cache the num pages calculation. It can take a while to
667 calculate the number of pages, and if you need to do it for each page
668 view, page-flipping becomes uselessly slow.
670 *** Integrate with image-dired.
672 *** Integrate with docview.
674 *** Integrate with image-mode.
675 Some work has been done, e.g. M-x image-transform-fit-to-height will
676 fit the image to the height of the Emacs window.
678 *** Look for optimizations for handling images with low depth.
679 Currently the code seems to default to 24 bit RGB which is costly for
680 images with lower bit depth.
682 *** Decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
683 functions for image size etc.
685 *** Test with more systems.
686 Tested on Fedora 12, 14, and the libmagick that ships with it.
687 I also tried using an ImageMagick compiled from their SVN, in
688 parallel with the one packaged by Fedora, it worked well.
689 Ubuntu 8.04 was tested, but it seems it ships a broken ImageMagick.
695 **** Command to insert an element template, including all required
696 attributes and child elements. When there's a choice of elements
697 possible, we could insert a comment, and put an overlay on that
698 comment that makes it behave like a button with a pop-up menu to
699 select the appropriate choice.
701 **** Command to tag a region. With a schema should complete using legal
702 tags, but should work without a schema as well.
704 **** Provide a way to conveniently rename an element. With a schema should
705 complete using legal tags, but should work without a schema as well.
709 **** Implement C-c C-o C-q.
711 **** Install pre/post command hook for moving out of invisible section.
713 **** Put a modify hook on invisible sections that expands them.
715 **** Integrate dumb folding somehow.
717 **** An element should be able to be its own heading.
719 **** Optimize to avoid complete buffer scan on each command.
721 **** Make it work with HTML-style headings (i.e. level indicated by
722 name of heading element rather than depth of section nesting).
724 **** Recognize root element as a section provided it has a title, even
725 if it doesn't match section-element-name-regex.
727 **** Support for incremental search automatically making hidden text visible.
729 **** Allow title to be an attribute.
731 **** Command that says to recognize the tag at point as a section/heading.
733 **** Explore better ways to determine when an element is a section
736 **** rng-next-error needs to either ignore invisible portion or reveal it
737 (maybe use isearch oriented text properties).
739 **** Errors within hidden section should be highlighted by underlining the
742 **** Make indirect buffers work.
744 **** How should nxml-refresh outline recover from non well-formed tags?
746 **** Hide tags in title elements?
748 **** Use overlays instead of text properties for holding outline state?
749 Necessary for indirect buffers to work?
751 **** Allow an outline to go in the speedbar.
753 **** Split up outlining manual section into subsections.
755 **** More detail in the manual about each outlining command.
757 **** More menu entries for hiding/showing?
759 **** Indication of many lines have been hidden?
763 **** Should rng-validate-mode give the user an opportunity to specify a
764 schema if there is currently none? Or should it at least give a hint
765 to the user how to specify a non-vacuous schema?
767 **** Support for adding new schemas to schema-locating files.
768 Add documentElement and namespace elements.
770 **** C-c C-w should be able to report current type id.
772 **** Implement doctypePublicId.
774 **** Implement typeIdBase.
776 **** Implement typeIdProcessingInstruction.
778 **** Support xml:base.
780 **** Implement group.
782 **** Find preferred prefix from schema-locating files. Get rid of
783 rng-preferred-prefix-alist.
785 **** Inserting document element with vacuous schema should complete using
786 document elements declared in schema locating files, and set schema
789 **** Add a ruleType attribute to the <include> element?
791 **** Allow processing instruction in prolog to contain the compact syntax
794 **** Use RDDL to locate a schema based on the namespace URI.
796 **** Should not prompt to add redundant association to schema locating file.
798 **** Command to reload current schema.
800 *** Schema-sensitive features
802 **** Should filter dynamic markup possibilities using schema validity, by
803 adding hook to nxml-mode.
805 **** Dynamic markup word should (at least optionally) be able to look in
806 other buffers that are using nxml-mode.
808 **** Should clicking on Invalid move to next error if already on an error?
810 **** Take advantage of a:documentation. Needs change to schema format.
812 **** Provide feasible validation (as in Jing) toggle.
814 **** Save the validation state as a property on the error overlay to enable
815 more detailed diagnosis.
817 **** Provide an Error Summary buffer showing all the validation errors.
819 **** Pop-up menu. What is useful? Tag a region (should be greyed out if
820 the region is not balanced). Suggestions based on error messages.
822 **** Have configurable list of namespace URIs so that we can provide
823 namespace URI completion on extension elements or with schema-less documents.
825 **** Allow validation to handle XInclude.
827 **** ID/IDREF support.
831 **** Make it work with icomplete. Only use a function to complete when
832 some of the possible names have undeclared namespaces.
834 **** How should C-return in mixed text work?
836 **** When there's a vacuous schema, C-return after < will insert the end-tag.
837 Is this a bug or a feature?
839 **** After completing start-tag, ensure we don't get unhelpful message
842 **** Syntax table for completion.
844 **** Should complete start-tag name with a space if namespace attributes
847 **** When completing start-tag name with no prefix and it doesn't match
848 should try to infer namespace from local name.
850 **** Should completion pay attention to characters after point? If so, how?
852 **** When completing start-tag name, add required atts if only one required
855 **** When completing attribute name, add attribute value if only one value
858 **** After attribute-value completion, insert space after close delimiter
859 if more attributes are required.
861 **** Complete on enumerated data values in elements.
863 **** When in context that allows only elements, should get tag
864 completion without having to type < first.
866 **** When immediately after start-tag name, and name is valid and not
867 prefix of any other name, should C-return complete on attribute names?
869 **** When completing attributes, more consistent to ignore all attributes
872 **** Inserting attribute value completions needs to be sensitive to what
873 delimiter is used so that it quotes the correct character.
875 **** Complete on encoding-names in XML decl.
877 **** Complete namespace declarations by searching for all namespaces
878 mentioned in the schema.
880 *** Well-formed XML support
882 **** Deal better with Mule-UCS
884 **** Deal with UTF-8 BOM when reading.
886 **** Complete entity names.
888 **** Provide some support for entity names for MathML.
890 **** Command to repeat the last tag.
892 **** Support for changing between character references and characters.
893 Need to check that context is one in which character references are
894 allowed. xmltok prolog parsing will need to distinguish parameter
895 literals from other kinds of literal.
897 **** Provide a comment command to bind to M-; that works better than the
900 **** Make indenting in a multi-line comment work.
902 **** Structure view. Separate buffer displaying element tree.
903 Be able to navigate from structure view to document and vice-versa.
905 **** Flash matching >.
907 **** Smart selection command that selects increasingly large syntactically
908 coherent chunks of XML. If point is in an attribute value, first
909 select complete value; then if command is repeated, select value plus
910 delimiters, then select attribute name as well, then complete
911 start-tag, then complete element, then enclosing element, etc.
913 **** ispell integration.
915 **** Block-level items in mixed content should be indented, e.g:
920 **** Provide option to indent like this:
921 <para>This is a paragraph
922 occupying multiple lines.</para>
924 **** Option to add make a / that closes a start-tag electrically insert a
925 space for the XHTML guys.
927 **** C-M-q should work.
931 **** Figure out workaround for CJK characters with regexps.
933 **** Does category C contain Cn?
935 **** Do ENTITY datatype properly.
937 *** XML Parsing Library
939 **** Parameter entity parsing option, nil (never), t (always),
940 unless-standalone (unless standalone="yes" in XML declaration).
942 **** When a file is currently being edited, there should be an option to
943 use its buffer instead of the on-disk copy.
945 *** Handling all XML features
947 **** Provide better support for editing external general parsed entities.
948 Perhaps provide a way to force ignoring undefined entities; maybe turn
949 this on automatically with <?xml encoding=""?> (with no version
952 **** Handle internal general entity declarations containing elements.
954 **** Handle external general entity declarations.
956 **** Handle default attribute declarations in internal subset.
958 **** Handle parameter entities (including DTD).
962 **** Do complete schema checking, at least optionally.
964 **** Detect include/external loops during schema parse.
966 **** Coding system detection for schemas. Should use utf-8/utf-16 per the
967 spec. But also need to allow encodings other than UTF-8/16 to support
968 CJK charsets that Emacs cannot represent in Unicode.
970 *** Catching XML errors
972 **** Check public identifiers.
974 **** Check default attribute values.
978 **** Explore whether overlay-recenter can cure overlays performance problems.
980 **** Cache schemas. Need to have list of files and mtimes.
982 **** Make it possible to reduce rng-validate-chunk-size significantly,
983 perhaps to 500 bytes, without bad performance impact: don't do
984 redisplay on every chunk; pass continue functions on other uses of
985 rng-do-some-validation.
987 **** Cache after first tag.
989 **** Introduce a new name class that is a choice between names (so that
992 **** intern-choice should simplify after patterns with same 1st/2nd args
994 **** Large numbers of overlays slow things down dramatically. Represent
995 errors using text properties. This implies we cannot incrementally
996 keep track of the number of errors, in order to determine validity.
997 Instead, when validation completes, scan for any characters with an
998 error text property; this seems to be fast enough even with large
999 buffers. Problem with error at end of buffer, where there's no
1000 character; need special variable for this. Need to merge face from
1001 font-lock with the error face: use :inherit attribute with list of two
1002 faces. How do we avoid making rng-valid depend on nxml-mode?
1006 **** Don't stop at newline in looking for close of start-tag.
1008 **** Use indentation to guide recovery from mismatched end-tags
1010 **** Don't keep parsing when currently not well-formed but previously
1013 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag by popping an open element if
1014 there was a mismatched end-tag unaccounted for.
1016 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag open on the hypothesis that there
1017 was an error in the namespace URI.
1019 **** Better recovery from ill-formed XML declarations.
1021 *** Useability improvements
1023 **** Should print a "Parsing..." message during long movements.
1025 **** Provide better position for reference to undefined pattern error.
1027 **** Put Well-formed in the mode-line when validating against any-content.
1029 **** Trim marking of illegal data for leading and trailing whitespace.
1031 **** Show Invalid status as soon as we are sure it's invalid, rather than
1032 waiting for everything to be completely up to date.
1034 **** When narrowed, Valid or Invalid status should probably consider only
1035 validity of narrowed region.
1039 **** Need to give an error for a document like: <foo/><![CDATA[ ]]>
1041 **** Make nxml-forward-balanced-item work better for the prolog.
1043 **** Make filling and indenting comments work in the prolog.
1045 **** Should delete RNC Input buffers.
1047 **** Figure out what regex use for NCName and use it consistently,
1049 **** Should have not-well-formed tokens in ref.
1051 **** Require version in XML declaration? Probably not because prevents
1052 use for external parsed entities. At least forbid standalone without version.
1054 **** Reject schema that compiles to rng-not-allowed-ipattern.
1056 **** Move point backwards on schema parse error so that it's on the right token.
1060 **** Use rng-quote-string consistently.
1062 **** Use parsing library for XML to texinfo conversion.
1064 **** Rename xmltok.el to nxml-token.el. Use nxml-t- prefix instead of
1065 xmltok-. Change nxml-t-type to nxml-t-token-type, nxml-t-start to
1068 **** Can we set fill-prefix to nil and rely on indenting?
1070 **** xmltok should make available replacement text of entities containing
1073 **** In rng-valid, instead of using modification-hooks and
1074 insert-behind-hooks on dependent overlays, use same technique as nxml-mode.
1076 **** Port to XEmacs. Issues include: Unicode (XEmacs seems to be based on
1077 Mule-UCS); overlays/text properties vs extents; absence of
1078 fontification-functions hook.
1082 **** Allow face to depend on element qname, attribute qname, attribute
1083 value. Use list with pairs of (R . F), where R specifies regexps and
1084 F specifies faces. How can this list be made to depend on the document type?
1088 **** Support RELAX NG XML syntax (use XML parsing library).
1090 **** Support W3C XML Schema (use XML parsing library).
1092 **** Command to infer schema from current document (like trang).
1096 **** XSLT schema should take advantage of RELAX NG to express cooccurrence
1097 constraints on attributes (e.g. xsl:template).
1101 **** Move material from README to manual.
1103 **** Document encodings.
1107 **** How can we allow an error to be displayed on a different token from
1108 where it is detected? In particular, for a missing closing ">" we
1109 will need to display it at the beginning of the following token. At the
1110 moment, when we parse the following token the error overlay will get cleared.
1112 **** How should rng-goto-next-error deal with narrowing?
1114 **** Perhaps should merge errors having same start position even if they
1115 have different ends.
1117 **** How to handle surrogates? One possibility is to be compatible with
1118 utf8.e: represent as sequence of 4 chars. But utf-16 is incompatible
1121 **** Should we distinguish well-formedness errors from invalidity errors?
1122 (I think not: we may want to recover from a bad start-tag by implying
1125 **** Seems to be a bug with Emacs, where a mouse movement that causes
1126 help-echo text to appear counts as pending input but does not cause
1127 idle timer to be restarted.
1129 **** Use XML to represent this file.
1131 **** I had a TODO which said simply "split-string". What did I mean?
1133 **** Investigate performance on large files all on one line.
1135 *** Issues for Emacs versions >= 22
1137 **** Take advantage of UTF-8 CJK support.
1139 **** Supply a next-error-function.
1141 **** Investigate this NEWS item "Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding
1142 systems for HTML/XML files automatically."
1144 **** Take advantage of the pointer text property.
1146 **** Leverage char-displayable-p.
1150 ** Cleanup all the GC_ mark bit stuff -- there is no longer any distinction
1151 since the mark bit is no longer stored in the Lisp_Object itself.
1153 ** Refine the `predicate' arg to read-file-name.
1154 Currently, it mixes up the predicate to apply when doing completion and the
1155 one to use when terminating the selection.
1157 ** Merge ibuffer.el and buff-menu.el.
1158 More specifically do what's needed to make ibuffer.el the default,
1159 or just an extension of buff-menu.el.
1161 ** Use pcomplete by default in shell-mode.
1162 This means to make it behave (by default) more like the current code.
1163 Use it also for read-shell-command, M-x compile, ...
1165 ** Merge sendmail.el and messages.el.
1166 Probably not a complete merge, but at least arrange for messages.el to be
1167 a derived mode of sendmail.el. Or arrange for messages.el to be split
1168 into a small core and "the rest" so that we use less resources as long as
1169 we stick to the features provided in sendmail.el.
1171 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
1172 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
1173 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
1176 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
1178 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
1179 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
1180 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
1181 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
1182 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
1184 ** Make SYNC_INPUT the default. [true since 2008-03-11]
1185 All loops using immediate_quit need to be checked to ensure that
1186 C-g can interrupt them, in case of an infinite loop. Once we
1187 switch to using SYNC_INPUT, we can remove the BLOCK_INPUTs in the
1188 allocation functions (allocate_string etc.) without worrying about
1191 ** Add "link" button class
1192 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
1193 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
1194 class to the standard "link" face.
1198 ** `make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
1200 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
1201 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
1203 ** Fix unexelf.c to handle the .data.rel and .data.rel.local
1204 sections made by GCC 3.4 on IRIX.
1207 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1209 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1210 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1211 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1212 (at your option) any later version.
1214 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1215 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1216 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1217 GNU General Public License for more details.
1219 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1220 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.