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1 Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
2
3 Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6
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. Also to check that it hasn't been done already, since we
11 don't always remember to update this file! It is best to consult
12 the latest version of this file in the Emacs source code repository.
13
14 Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be prepared to sign
15 legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work to the FSF.
16 Copyright assignment is a simple process. Residents of some countries
17 can do it entirely electronically. We can help you get started, and
18 answer any questions you may have (or point you to the people with the
19 answers), at the emacs-devel@gnu.org mailing list.
20
21 For more information about getting involved, see the CONTRIBUTE file.
22
23 As well as the issues listed here, there are bug reports at
24 <http://debbugs.gnu.org>. Bugs tagged "easy" ought to be suitable for
25 beginners to work on, but unfortunately we are not very good at using
26 this tag. Bugs tagged "help" are ones where assistance is required,
27 but may be difficult to fix. Bugs with severity "important" or higher
28 are the ones we consider more important, but these also may be
29 difficult to fix. Bugs with severity "minor" may be simpler, but this
30 is not always true.
31
32 * Speed up Elisp execution
33 ** Speed up function calls
34 Change src/bytecode.c so that calls from byte-code functions to byte-code
35 functions don't go through Ffuncall/funcall_lambda/exec_byte_code but instead
36 stay within exec_byte_code.
37
38 ** Add new 'switch' byte-code
39 This byte-code would take one argument from the stack (the object to test)
40 and one argument from the constant-pool (a switch table, implemented as an
41 eq-hashtable) and would jump to the "label" contained in the hashtable.
42
43 Then add a 'case' special-form that can be compiled to this byte-code.
44 This would behave just like cl-case, but instead of expanding to cond+eq it
45 would be its own special form and would be compiled specially.
46
47 Then change pcase to use 'case' when applicable.
48
49 Then change the byte-compiler to recognize (cond ((eq x 'foo) bar) ...)
50 and turn it into a 'case' for more efficient execution.
51
52 ** Improve the byte-compiler to recognize immutable (lexical) bindings
53 and get rid of them if they're used only once and/or they're bound to
54 a constant expression.
55
56 Such things aren't present in hand-written code, but macro expansion and
57 defsubst can often end up generating things like
58 (funcall (lambda (arg) (body)) actual) which then get optimized to
59 (let ((arg actual)) (body)) but should additionally get optimized further
60 when 'actual' is a constant/copyable expression.
61
62 ** Add an "indirect goto" byte-code and use it for local lambda expressions.
63 E.g. when you have code like
64
65 (let ((foo (lambda (x) bar)))
66 (dosomething
67 (funcall foo toto)
68 (blabla (funcall foo titi))))
69
70 turn those 'funcalls' into jumps and their return into indirect jumps back.
71
72 ** Compile efficiently local recursive functions
73
74 Similar to the previous point, we should be able to handle something like
75
76 (letrec ((loop () (blabla) (if (toto) (loop))))
77 (loop))
78
79 which ideally should generate the same byte-code as
80
81 (while (progn (blabla) (toto)))
82
83 * Things that were planned for Emacs-24
84
85 ** concurrency: including it as an "experimental" compile-time option
86 sounds good. Of course there might still be big questions around "which form
87 of concurrency" we'll want.
88 ** better support for dynamic embedded graphics: I like this idea (my
89 mpc.el code could use it for the volume widget), though I wonder if the
90 resulting efficiency will be sufficient.
91 ** Spread Semantic.
92 ** Improve the "code snippets" support: consolidate skeleton.el, tempo.el,
93 and expand.el (any other?) and then advertise/use/improve it.
94 ** Improve VC: yes, there's a lot of work to be done there :-(
95
96 ** Random things that cross my mind right now that I'd like to see (some of
97 them from my local hacks), but it's not obvious at all whether they'll
98 make it.
99 *** prog-mode could/should provide a better fill-paragraph default
100 that uses syntax-tables to recognize string/comment boundaries.
101 *** provide more completion-at-point-functions. Make existing
102 in-buffer completion use completion-at-point.
103 *** "functional" function-key-map that would make it easy to add (and
104 remove) mappings like "FOO-mouse-4 -> FOO-scroll-down",
105 "FOO-tab -> ?\FOO-\t", "uppercase -> lowercase", "[fringe KEY...] ->
106 [KEY]", "H-FOO -> M-FOO", "C-x C-y FOO -> H-FOO", ...
107
108 * Things related to elpa.gnu.org.
109
110 ** Move idlwave to elpa.gnu.org.
111 Need to sync up the Emacs and external versions.
112 See <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-07/msg00008.html>
113
114 ** Move Org mode to elpa.gnu.org.
115 See <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-08/msg00300.html>
116 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-11/msg00257.html>
117
118 ** Move verilog-mode to elpa.gnu.org.
119 See <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg01180.html>
120
121 ** Move vhdl-mode to elpa.gnu.org.
122 See <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg01180.html>
123
124 * Simple tasks. These don't require much Emacs knowledge, they are
125 suitable for anyone from beginners to experts.
126
127 ** Convert modes that use view-mode to be derived from special-mode instead.
128
129 ** Major modes should have a menu entry.
130
131 ** Check if all items on the mode-line have a suitable tooltip for all modes.
132
133 ** edebug and debugger-mode should have a toolbar.
134 It can use the same icons as gud.
135
136 ** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
137 to use it.
138
139 ** Convert all defvars with leading '*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
140 of appropriate :type and :group.
141
142 ** Remove any leading '*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
143 [done?] [A lot of them are in CC Mode.]
144
145 ** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
146 This needs a bit of care, since often people have become used to
147 expecting such variables to always be defined, eg when they modify
148 things in their .emacs.
149
150 ** See if other files can use generated-autoload-file (see eg ps-print).
151
152 ** Write more tests. Pick a fixed bug from the database, write a test
153 case to make sure it stays fixed. Or pick your favorite programming
154 major-mode, and write a test for its indentation. Or a version
155 control backend, and write a test for its status parser. Etc.
156 See test/automated for examples.
157
158 * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
159
160 ** Flymake's customization mechanism needs to be both simpler (fewer
161 levels of indirection) and better documented, so it is easier to
162 understand. I find it quite hard to figure out what compilation
163 command it will use.
164
165 I suggest totally rewriting that part of Flymake, using the simplest
166 mechanism that suffices for the specific needs. That will be easy
167 for users to customize.
168
169 ** Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs
170 on each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).
171
172 ** revert-buffer should eliminate overlays and the mark.
173 For related problems consult the thread starting with
174 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01346.html
175
176 ** erase-buffer should perhaps disregard read-only properties of text.
177
178 ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
179 invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
180 the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user.
181 It ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
182 text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
183
184 ** Feature to change cursor shape when Emacs is idle (for more than
185 a specified time).
186
187 ** The buttons at the top of a custom buffer should not omit
188 variables whose values are currently hidden.
189
190 ** Clean up the variables in browse-url. Perhaps use a shell command string to
191 specify the browser instead of the mushrooming set of functions.
192 See also ESR's proposal for a BROWSER environment variable
193 <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/browse-url.patch>.
194
195 ** Enhance scroll-bar to handle tall line (similar to line-move).
196
197 ** In Custom buffers, put the option that turns a mode on or off first,
198 using a heuristic of some kind?
199
200 ** Define recompute-arg and recompute-arg-if for fix_command to use.
201 See rms message of 11 Dec 05 in
202 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2005-12/msg00165.html,
203 and the rest of that discussion.
204
205 ** In Emacs Info, examples of using Customize should be clickable
206 and they should create Custom buffers.
207
208 ** The toolbar should show keyboard equivalents in its tooltips.
209
210 ** Add function to redraw the tool bar.
211
212 ** Redesign the load-history data structure so it can cope better
213 with evaluating definitions of the same function from different files,
214 recording which file the latest definition came from.
215
216 ** make back_comment use syntax-ppss or equivalent.
217
218 ** Consider improving src/sysdep.c's search for a fqdn.
219 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00782.html
220
221 ** Find a proper fix for rcirc multiline nick adding.
222 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-04/msg00684.html
223
224 ** Check for any included packages that define obsolete bug-reporting commands.
225 Change them to use report-emacs-bug.
226 *** Related functions:
227 **** gnus-bug
228 **** report-calc-bug
229 **** org-submit-bug-report
230 **** lm-report-bug
231 **** tramp-bug
232 **** c-submit-bug-report
233 **** ffap-bug and ffap-submit-bug (obsoleted)
234 [Do all of them need changing?]
235
236 ** Allow fringe indicators to display a tooltip (provide a help-echo property?)
237
238 ** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
239 like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
240
241 ** 'dired-mode' should specify the semantics of 'buffer-modified-p' for
242 dired buffers and DTRT WRT 'auto-revert-mode'.
243
244 ** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
245 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
246
247 * Important features:
248
249 ** "Emacs as word processor"
250 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-11/msg00515.html
251 rms writes:
252 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWYG word
253 processing. That is why we added text properties and variable
254 width fonts. However, more features are still needed to achieve this.
255
256 ** Extend text-properties and overlays
257 *** Several text-property planes
258 This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
259 get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
260 simply use the 'face' property in the 'font-lock' plane.
261
262 Basically 'put-text-property' and friends would take an extra argument PLANE
263 (maybe the best backward-compatible way to do that is to make it so that
264 PROPERTY can be a cons cell (PLANE . PROP)). So font-lock would
265 do (put-text-property start end '(font-lock . face) value).
266
267 All the properties coming from the various planes would get merged via an Elisp
268 function (so it can merge 'face' differently than 'keymap' or it could give
269 different priorities to different planes (we could imagine enabling/disabling
270 planes)). The merging would not happen lazily while looking up properties but
271 instead it would take place eagerly in 'add-text-properties'. This is based on
272 the idea that it's much more frequent to lookup properties than to
273 modify them. Also, when properties are looked up during redisplay, we
274 generally can't run Elisp code, whereas we generally can do that when
275 properties are added.
276
277 *** Move overlays to intervals.c
278
279 Currently overlays are implemented as (two) sorted singly linked lists (one
280 for overlays_before some position and one for overlay_after that
281 position, for some quirky definition of "before" and "after").
282 The function 'overlay-recenter' changes the position used for the split
283 (and is called internally in various situations).
284
285 Each overlay is itself implemented with two markers (which keep track of
286 the overlay-start and overlay-end). Markers are implemented as
287 a non-sorted singly linked list of markers. So every text
288 insertion/deletion requires O(N) time, where N is the number of markers
289 since we have to go down that list to update those markers that are
290 affected by the modification.
291
292 You can start in src/buffer.[ch], maybe grepping for overlays_before for
293 a starting point.
294
295 Text-properties, OTOH, are implemented with a (mostly) balanced binary
296 tree. This is implemented in src/intervals.[ch].
297
298 So we'd like to change overlays so that they don't use markers (and we
299 don't keep them in two sorted singly-linked lists) any more. Instead,
300 we'll store them inside the balanced binary tree used for
301 text-properties. I think we can use the "augmented tree" approach
302 described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_tree.
303
304 To ease up debugging during development, I'd guess the implementation
305 would first add the new stuff, keeping the old stuff (i.e. add to
306 Lisp_Overlay whichever fields are needed for the new code, while keeping
307 the old ones, add needed overlay fields to the intervals tree, but keep
308 the old fields, the overlays_before etc...). This way, you can add
309 consistency checks that make sure the new code computes the same results
310 as the old code. And once that works well, we can remove the old code
311 and old fields.
312
313 ** Having tabs above a window to switch buffers in it.
314
315 ** "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations. We have
316 had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
317 beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
318 advantage of them. Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.
319
320 Perspectives work well even if you do the equivalent of C-x 4 C-f
321 because of the distinction between view windows vs file windows. In
322 Emacs this is more or less the "dedicated window" feature, but we have
323 never really made it work for this.
324
325 Perspectives also need to interact with the tabs.
326
327 ** FFI (foreign function interface)
328 See eg http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00246.html
329
330 One way of doing this is to start with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
331 to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
332 access in cases which need more than Lisp.
333
334 ** Replace unexec with a more portable form of dumping
335 See eg http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg01034.html
336 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-06/msg00452.html
337
338 One way is to provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
339
340 ** Imenu could be extended into a file-structure browsing mechanism
341 using code like that of customize-groups.
342
343 ** Display something in the margin on lines that have compilation errors.
344
345 ** Compilation error navigation bar, parallel to the scroll bar,
346 indicating where in the buffer there are compilation errors.
347 Perhaps we could arrange to display these error indications on top
348 of the scroll bar itself. That depends on to what extent toolkit
349 scroll bars are extensible.
350
351 ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
352 list fonts, display a font as a sample, etc. [fx is looking at
353 multilingual font selection for the Unicode branch of Emacs.]
354
355 ** Provide a convenient way to select a color with the mouse.
356
357 ** Rewrite the face code to be simpler, clearer and faster.
358
359 ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF. [Is there actually a
360 decent single definition of RTF? Maybe see info at
361 http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.] This task seems to be addressed
362 by http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/emacs-rtf/, which is still in
363 very early stages.
364
365 Another place to look is the Wikipedia article at
366 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format
367
368 It currently points to the latest spec of RTF v1.9.1 at
369 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10725
370
371 ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
372 properly with variable-pitch faces.
373
374 ** Implement intelligent search/replace, going beyond query-replace
375 (see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/clustering/chi04.pdf).
376
377 ** Implement other text formatting properties.
378 *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
379 *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
380 Don't break the line between two characters that have the
381 same value of this property.
382 *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
383
384 ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.
385
386 ** Set up a facility to save backtraces when errors happen during
387 specified filters, specified timers, and specified hooks.
388
389 ** Install mmc@maruska.dyndns.org's no-flicker change.
390
391 ** Add a "current vertical pixel level" value that goes with point,
392 so that motion commands can also move through tall images.
393 This value would be to point as window-vscroll is to window-start.
394
395 ** Address internationalization of symbols names essentially
396 as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.
397
398 ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text. [This
399 probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
400 in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
401 pixels. The current code assumes a specific locale; that isn't good
402 enough even if X can render the arbitrary text] [The gtk
403 port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
404 Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
405 Maybe making Lucid menus work like Gtk's (i.e. just force utf-8) is good
406 enough now that Emacs can encode most chars into utf-8.
407
408 ** The GNUstep port needs some serious attention, ideally from someone
409 familiar with GNUstep and Objective C.
410
411 * Other features we would like:
412
413 ** A more modern printing interface. One that pops up a dialog that lets
414 you choose printer, page style, etc.
415 Integration with the Gtk print dialog is apparently difficult. See eg:
416 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-03/msg00501.html
417 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-04/msg00034.html
418
419 ** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
420 from the emacsclient process.
421
422 ** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
423
424 ** Create a category of errors called 'process-error'
425 for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
426
427 ** Maybe reinterpret 'parse-error' as a category of errors
428 and put some other errors under it.
429
430 ** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
431
432 ** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
433
434 ** Record the sxhash of the default value for customized variables
435 and notify the user (maybe by adding a menu item or toolbar button,
436 as the detection can occur during autoload time) when the default
437 changes (meaning that new versions of the Lisp source with a changed
438 default value got installed) and offer ediff on the respective
439 customization buffers.
440
441 ** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
442 function that has advice. The overlay could have 'after-text' like
443 " [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
444 has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
445 use to view the advice.
446
447 ** Add a function to get the insertion-type of the markers in an overlay.
448
449 ** ange-ftp
450 *** understand sftp
451 This is hard to make work because sftp doesn't print status messages.
452
453 *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
454
455 ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
456 E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
457 M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
458 H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
459
460 ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
461 *** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like 'begin' and 'end'.
462 *** nested string-delimiters (for PostScript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
463 *** support for infix operators (with precedence).
464 *** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
465 *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
466 by elisp code. Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
467 at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
468 *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
469
470 ** Add a way to convert a keyboard macro to equivalent Lisp code.
471
472 ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
473 of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
474 It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
475
476 ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
477 from other input methods. Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
478 user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
479 latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
480
481 ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
482 different parts of a buffer. This could be useful in editing
483 Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
484 where one language is embedded in another language. See
485 http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/multi-mode.el and also
486 mmm-mode, as reference for approaches taken by others.
487
488 ** Arrange a way for an input method to return the first character
489 immediately, then replace it later. So that C-s a with
490 input method latin-1-postfix would immediately search for an a.
491
492 ** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
493 output to a different filter.
494
495 ** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops.
496
497 ** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
498
499 ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
500 when needed for undoing. This could extend undo capacity.
501 undo-tree, in ELPA, already does this; its saving code could be
502 integrated without requiring the use of undo-tree.
503
504 ** Change the Windows NT menu code
505 so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
506 regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
507 when the user tries to use the menubar.
508
509 This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
510 the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
511 thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
512 the whole menu bar. In the mean time, it should process other messages.
513
514 ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
515 significant work), PSGML, _possibly_ ECB.
516 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg01493.html
517 Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
518 have been missed.
519
520 ** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
521 smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
522 compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
523
524 ** Split out parts of lisp.h.
525
526 ** Update the FAQ.
527
528 ** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
529 [It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
530
531 ** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
532 the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on this.]
533
534 ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
535
536 ** Add definitions for symbol properties, for documentation purposes.
537
538 ** Temporarily remove scroll bars when they are not needed, typically
539 when a buffer can be fully displayed in its window.
540
541 ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
542 size and its position from lines instead of characters.
543
544 ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
545 converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?). [does
546 doc-view.el do this, or could it be extended to do this?
547 Does ImageMagick obsolete this idea?]
548
549 ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
550 e.g. to render graphics from Java applets. [gerd and/or wmperry
551 thought this was feasible.]
552
553 ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
554 (Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
555 to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
556
557 ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
558 encodings.
559
560 ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
561
562 ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
563 colors of the applicable faces.
564
565 ** Make 'format-time-string' preserve text properties like 'format'.
566
567 ** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
568 or the end of the buffer.
569
570 ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs's garbage collector
571 to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs. Note
572 that Boehm garbage collector provides this.
573
574 ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
575 options come first in the Customize buffers. This could be done by
576 either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
577 they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after attributes.
578
579 ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
580 ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
581 This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
582 aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
583
584 Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
585 artist, ansi-color, array, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
586 completion, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
587 easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
588 generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit,
589 makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
590 mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
591 snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
592 the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
593 vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt,
594 feedmail [?], uce, gametree, page-ext,
595 refbib, refer, scribe, texinfo, underline,
596 cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, xml,
597 cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
598 probably in separate manual.
599
600 ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
601 the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
602 with the color used for the transparent regions.)
603
604 ** Convenient access to the 'values' variable. It would be nice to have an
605 interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
606 list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
607 other variable, without changing the value of 'values'.
608
609 ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
610 i.e. '(' doesn't match ']'.
611
612 ** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to 'file-attributes' and
613 'directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
614 Whenever possible, use value 'string.
615 When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
616 If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
617 the definition of 'file-attributes' and 'directory-files-and-attributes'
618 and from the calls.
619
620 ** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
621 only the variable 'current-language-environment'.
622
623 ** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
624 better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
625 environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
626 are also put in utf-8 lang. env. In such a case, it is
627 better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
628
629 ** Enhance locale handling: handle language, territory and charset
630 orthogonally and de-emphasize language environments. Use the locale
631 to set up more things, such as fontsets, the default Ispell
632 dictionary, diary format, calendar holidays and display, quoting
633 characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
634 sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
635 directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
636 common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... 'locale-info'
637 needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
638
639 ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
640 Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
641 addition to ASCII.
642
643 ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
644
645 ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
646 space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
647
648 ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
649 in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
650 "japanese". Currently, most Japanese users are using external
651 packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
652
653 ** Let LEIM handle the Mode_switch key like XIM does (i.e. a toggle like C-\
654 but which can also be used as a modifier).
655
656 ** Improve Help buffers: Change the face of previously visited links (like
657 Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
658 lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
659
660 ** Possibly make 'list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
661 See thread
662 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
663 [rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
664
665 ** Possibly make cal-dst use the system timezone database directly.
666 See thread
667 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-11/msg00060.html>
668
669 ** Possibly add a "close" button to the modeline.
670 The idea is to add an "X" of some kind, that when clicked deletes
671 the window associated with that modeline.
672 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02416.html
673
674 * Things to be done for specific packages or features
675
676 ** NeXTstep port
677
678 *** Missing features
679
680 This sections contains features found in other official Emacs ports.
681
682 **** Support for xwidgets
683
684 Emacs 25 has support for xwidgets, a system to include operating
685 system components into an Emacs buffer. The components range from
686 simple buttons to webkit (effectively, a web browser).
687
688 Currently, xwidgets works only for the gtk+ framework but it is
689 designed to be compatible with multiple Emacs ports.
690
691 **** Respect 'frame-inhibit-implied-resize'
692
693 When the variable 'frame-inhibit-implied-resize' is non-nil, frames
694 should not be resized when operations like changing font or toggling
695 the tool bar is performed.
696
697 Unfortunately, the tool bar (and possible other operations) always
698 resize the frame.
699
700 **** Support 'proced' (implement 'process-attributes')
701
702 Unfortunately, a user-level process like Emacs does not have the
703 privileges to get information about other processes under OS X.
704
705 There are other ways to do this:
706
707 1) Spawn "ps" and parse the output ("ps" has superuser privileges).
708
709 2) Sign Emacs as part of the distribution process.
710
711 3) Ask the user to self-sign Emacs, if this feature is of interest.
712
713 Anders Lindgren <andlind@gmail.com> has implemented
714 'process-attributes' for OS X, which currently only work when
715 running Emacs as root.
716
717 See this article by Bozhidar Batsov for an overview of Proced:
718 http://emacsredux.com/blog/2013/05/02/manage-processes-with-proced/
719
720 **** Tooltip properties
721
722 Tooltip properties like the background color and font are hard-wired,
723 even though Emacs allows a user to customize such features.
724
725 *** New features
726
727 This section contains features unique to Nextstep and/or OS X.
728
729 **** PressAndHold for writing accented character
730
731 On OS X, many application support the press and hold pattern to
732 invoke a menu of accented characters. (See example at
733 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201586 .)
734
735 Currently, this doesn't work in Emacs.
736
737 Note that "ns-win.el" explicitly disables this.
738
739 Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
740 implemented in Emacs for a free system.
741
742 **** Floating scroll bars
743
744 In modern OS X applications, the scroll bar often floats over the
745 content, and is invisible unless actually used. This makes the user
746 interface less cluttered and more area could be used to contain text.
747
748 With floating scroll bars, the user interface would look like it does
749 when they are disabled today. However, they will be made visible when
750 a scroll action is initiated, e.g. by putting two fingers on a
751 trackpad.
752
753 Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
754 implemented in Emacs for a free system.
755
756 *** Features from the "mac" port
757
758 This section contains features available in the "mac" Emacs port.
759
760 As the "mac" port (as of this writing) isn't an official Emacs port,
761 it might contain features not following the FSF rule "must exist on
762 free systems".
763
764 The "mac" port is based on the Emacs 22 C-based Carbon interface.
765 It has been maintained in parallel to the official Cocoa-based NS
766 interface. The Carbon interface has been enhanced, and a number of the
767 features of that interface could be implemented NS.
768
769 **** Smooth scrolling -- maybe not a good idea
770
771 Today, by default, scrolling with a trackpad makes the text move in
772 steps of five lines. (Scrolling with SHIFT scrolls one line at a time.)
773
774 The "mac" port provides smooth, pixel-based, scrolling. This is a very
775 popular features. However, there are drawbacks to this method: what
776 happens if only a fraction of a line is visible at the top of a
777 window, is the partially visible text considered part of the window or
778 not? (Technically, what should 'window-start' return.)
779
780 An alternative would be to make one-line scrolling the default on NS
781 (or in Emacs in general).
782
783 Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
784 implemented in Emacs for a free system.
785
786 **** Mouse gestures
787
788 The "mac" port defines the gestures 'swipe-left/right/up/down',
789 'magnify-up/down', and 'rotate-left/right'.
790
791 It also binds the magnification commands to change the font
792 size. (This should be not be done in a specific interface, instead
793 Emacs should do this binding globally.)
794
795 Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
796 implemented in Emacs for a free system.
797
798 **** Synthesize bold fonts
799
800 *** Open issues
801
802 This section contains issues where there is an ongoing debate.
803
804 **** Key bindings of CMD and ALT
805
806 Currently in the "ns" port, ALT is bound to Meta and CMD is bound to
807 Super -- allowing the user to use typical OS X commands like CMD-A to
808 mark everything.
809
810 Unfortunately, when using an international keyboard, you can't type
811 normal characters like "(" etc.
812
813 There are many alternative key bindings. One solution is to bind CMD
814 to Meta and pass ALT to the system. In fact, this is what Emacs did up
815 to, and including, version 22. Also, this is how the "mac" port binds
816 the keys.
817
818 One could envision asymmetrical variants as well, however, this is
819 inappropriate for the default setting.
820
821 See the discussion on emacs-devel:
822 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-12/msg01575.html
823 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-01/msg00008.html
824
825 *** Internal development features
826
827 **** Regression test system (or at least a checklist)
828
829 Today, after each change to the user interface, Emacs must be manually
830 tested. Often, small details are overlooked ("Oh, I didn't test
831 toggling the tool-bar in one of the full screen modes, when multiple
832 frame were open -- silly me.")
833
834 It would be an enormous help if this could be tested automatically.
835 Many features are generic, however, the NS interface provides a number
836 of unique features.
837
838 **** Existing packages
839
840 Note that there is a generic UI test named frame-test.el, see
841 http://debbugs.gnu.org/21415#284 .
842 The NS interface passes this, with the exception of two toolbar-related errors.
843
844 **** Anders frame test
845
846 Anders Lindgren <andlind@gmail.com> has implemented some (very basic)
847 tests for full screen, toolbar, and auto-hiding the menu bar.
848
849 **** Make sure all build variants work
850
851 Emacs can be build in a number of different ways. For each feature,
852 consider if is really is "NS" specific, or if it should be applied to
853 all build versions.
854
855 - With the "NS" interface. This is the normal way to build Emacs on OS X.
856
857 - With the "X11" interface. On OS X, this is mainly of interest to
858 developers of Emacs to get a "reference" interface implementations.
859 However, it might be of interest for people working remotely, as X11
860 applications can be used over a network connection.
861
862 - Console only.
863
864 *** Bugs
865
866 **** Incorrect translation of Super modifier with Ctrl or Meta on OS X
867
868 When pressing 'M-s-a', Emacs replies "M-s-Ã¥ is undefined". What
869 happened is a mix of Emacs view that Meta and Super has been pressed,
870 and OS X view that ALT-a should yield "Ã¥" (U+00E5 LATIN SMALL LETTER A
871 WITH RING ABOVE).
872
873 The bug reports suggest two different patches; unfortunately, neither
874 works properly. For example:
875
876 Use a Swedish keyboard layout
877
878 (setq ns-alternate-modifier nil)
879
880 "CMD-ALT-9"
881
882 Today, this correctly yields that s-] is undefined. With either
883 of the two patches, Emacs responds that s-9 was pressed.
884
885 More investigation is needed to fix this problem.
886
887 Links:
888 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/19977
889 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/21330
890 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/21551
891
892 **** Toggling the toolbar in fullheight or maximized modes
893
894 The toolbar, in the NS interface, is not considered part of the text
895 area. When it is toggled, the Emacs frame change height accordingly.
896
897 Unfortunately, this also occurs when the frame is in fullheight or
898 maximized modes (N.B. this is not the same as "fullscreen"). The
899 effect is that the full frame size either increases (stretching down
900 below the lower edge of the screen) or decreases (leaving space
901 between the lower edge of the frame and the lower edge of the screen).
902
903 A better solution would be for the frame to retain its size,
904 i.e. change the text area.
905
906 This is related to the 'frame-inhibit-implied-resize' issue.
907
908 **** The event loop does not redraw.
909 A problem is that redraw don't happen during resize,
910 because we can't break out from the NSapp loop during resize.
911 There was a special trick to detect mouse press in the lower right
912 corner and track mouse movements, but this did not work well, and was
913 not scalable to the new Lion "resize on every window edge" behavior.
914 [As of trunk r109635, 2012-08-15, the event loop no longer polls.]
915
916 **** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
917 up on top of all others (probably fixed in bug#17439)
918
919 **** free_frame_resources, face colors
920
921 **** Numeric keysetting bug.
922
923 *** Mac-related
924
925 **** Open file:/// URLs.
926
927 **** Put frame autopositioning into C code somewhere -- if loc = same, offset.
928
929 **** Automap ctrl-mouse-1 to mouse-3.
930
931 **** Deal with Finder aliases somehow.
932
933 **** Ctrl-F2 won't pull up menus.
934
935 *** Other / Low Priority:
936
937 **** Better recognition of Unicode scripts / Greek / composition.
938
939 **** Undo for color-drag face customization.
940
941 ** Bidirectional editing
942
943 *** Support reordering structured text
944 Two important use cases: (1) comments and strings in program sources,
945 and (2) text with markup, like HTML or XML.
946
947 One idea is to invent a special text property that would instruct the
948 display engine to reorder only the parts of buffer text covered by
949 that property. The display engine will then push its state onto the
950 iterator stack, restrict the bidi iterator to accessing only the
951 portion of buffer text covered by the property, reorder the text, then
952 pop its state from stack and continue as usual. This will require
953 minor changes in the bidi_it structure.
954
955 This design requires Lisp-level code to put the text properties on the
956 relevant parts of the buffer text. That could be done using JIT
957 fontifications, or as a preliminary processing when the file is
958 visited. With HTML/XML, the code that puts text properties needs to
959 pay attention to the bidi directives embedded in the HTML/XML stream.
960
961 *** Allow the user to control the direction of the UI
962
963 **** Introduce user option to control direction of mode line.
964 One problem is the header line, which is produced by the same routines
965 as the mode line. While it makes sense to have the mode-line
966 direction controlled by a single global variable, header lines are
967 buffer-specific, so they need a separate treatment in this regard.
968
969 **** User options to control direction of menu bar and tool bar.
970 For the tool bar, it's relatively easy: set it.paragraph_embedding
971 in redisplay_tool_bar according to the user variable, and make
972 f->desired_tool_bar_string multibyte with STRING_SET_MULTIBYTE. Some
973 minor changes will be needed to set the right_box_line_p and
974 left_box_line_p flags correctly for the R2L tool bar.
975
976 However, it makes no sense to display the tool bar right to left if
977 the menu bar cannot be displayed in the same direction.
978
979 R2L menu bar is tricky for the same reasons as the mode line. In
980 addition, toolkit builds create their menu bars in toolkit-specific
981 parts of code, bypassing xdisp.c, so those parts need to be enhanced
982 with toolkit-specific code to display the menu bar right to left.
983
984 ** ImageMagick support
985
986 *** image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
987 ImageMagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
988 preferring the ImageMagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in jpegs.
989
990 Try (setq image-type-header-regexps nil) for a quick hack to prefer
991 ImageMagick over the jpg loader.
992
993 *** For some reason it's unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
994 image bundle using the :index feature. The ImageMagick "display"
995 command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the Emacs
996 code. It seems ImageMagick tries to unpack every page when loading the
997 bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase in Emacs though.
998
999 ImageMagick 6.6.2-9 introduced a bugfix for single page djvu load. It
1000 is now much faster to use the :index feature, but still not very fast.
1001
1002 *** Try to cache the num pages calculation. It can take a while to
1003 calculate the number of pages, and if you need to do it for each page
1004 view, page-flipping becomes uselessly slow.
1005
1006 *** Integrate with image-dired.
1007
1008 *** Integrate with docview.
1009
1010 *** Integrate with image-mode.
1011 Some work has been done, e.g. M-x image-transform-fit-to-height will
1012 fit the image to the height of the Emacs window.
1013
1014 *** Look for optimizations for handling images with low depth.
1015 Currently the code seems to default to 24 bit RGB which is costly for
1016 images with lower bit depth.
1017
1018 *** Decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
1019 functions for image size etc.
1020
1021 ** nxml mode
1022
1023 *** High priority
1024
1025 **** Command to insert an element template, including all required
1026 attributes and child elements. When there's a choice of elements
1027 possible, we could insert a comment, and put an overlay on that
1028 comment that makes it behave like a button with a pop-up menu to
1029 select the appropriate choice.
1030
1031 **** Command to tag a region. With a schema should complete using legal
1032 tags, but should work without a schema as well.
1033
1034 **** Provide a way to conveniently rename an element. With a schema should
1035 complete using legal tags, but should work without a schema as well.
1036
1037 *** Outlining
1038
1039 **** Implement C-c C-o C-q.
1040
1041 **** Install pre/post command hook for moving out of invisible section.
1042
1043 **** Put a modify hook on invisible sections that expands them.
1044
1045 **** Integrate dumb folding somehow.
1046
1047 **** An element should be able to be its own heading.
1048
1049 **** Optimize to avoid complete buffer scan on each command.
1050
1051 **** Make it work with HTML-style headings (i.e. level indicated by
1052 name of heading element rather than depth of section nesting).
1053
1054 **** Recognize root element as a section provided it has a title, even
1055 if it doesn't match section-element-name-regex.
1056
1057 **** Support for incremental search automatically making hidden text visible.
1058
1059 **** Allow title to be an attribute.
1060
1061 **** Command that says to recognize the tag at point as a section/heading.
1062
1063 **** Explore better ways to determine when an element is a section
1064 or a heading.
1065
1066 **** rng-next-error needs to either ignore invisible portion or reveal it
1067 (maybe use isearch oriented text properties).
1068
1069 **** Errors within hidden section should be highlighted by underlining the
1070 ellipsis.
1071
1072 **** Make indirect buffers work.
1073
1074 **** How should nxml-refresh outline recover from non well-formed tags?
1075
1076 **** Hide tags in title elements?
1077
1078 **** Use overlays instead of text properties for holding outline state?
1079 Necessary for indirect buffers to work?
1080
1081 **** Allow an outline to go in the speedbar.
1082
1083 **** Split up outlining manual section into subsections.
1084
1085 **** More detail in the manual about each outlining command.
1086
1087 **** More menu entries for hiding/showing?
1088
1089 **** Indication of many lines have been hidden?
1090
1091 *** Locating schemas
1092
1093 **** Should rng-validate-mode give the user an opportunity to specify a
1094 schema if there is currently none? Or should it at least give a hint
1095 to the user how to specify a non-vacuous schema?
1096
1097 **** Support for adding new schemas to schema-locating files.
1098 Add documentElement and namespace elements.
1099
1100 **** C-c C-w should be able to report current type id.
1101
1102 **** Implement doctypePublicId.
1103
1104 **** Implement typeIdBase.
1105
1106 **** Implement typeIdProcessingInstruction.
1107
1108 **** Support xml:base.
1109
1110 **** Implement group.
1111
1112 **** Find preferred prefix from schema-locating files. Get rid of
1113 rng-preferred-prefix-alist.
1114
1115 **** Inserting document element with vacuous schema should complete using
1116 document elements declared in schema locating files, and set schema
1117 appropriately.
1118
1119 **** Add a ruleType attribute to the <include> element?
1120
1121 **** Allow processing instruction in prolog to contain the compact syntax
1122 schema directly.
1123
1124 **** Use RDDL to locate a schema based on the namespace URI.
1125
1126 **** Should not prompt to add redundant association to schema locating file.
1127
1128 **** Command to reload current schema.
1129
1130 *** Schema-sensitive features
1131
1132 **** Should filter dynamic markup possibilities using schema validity, by
1133 adding hook to nxml-mode.
1134
1135 **** Dynamic markup word should (at least optionally) be able to look in
1136 other buffers that are using nxml-mode.
1137
1138 **** Should clicking on Invalid move to next error if already on an error?
1139
1140 **** Take advantage of a:documentation. Needs change to schema format.
1141
1142 **** Provide feasible validation (as in Jing) toggle.
1143
1144 **** Save the validation state as a property on the error overlay to enable
1145 more detailed diagnosis.
1146
1147 **** Provide an Error Summary buffer showing all the validation errors.
1148
1149 **** Pop-up menu. What is useful? Tag a region (should be grayed out if
1150 the region is not balanced). Suggestions based on error messages.
1151
1152 **** Have configurable list of namespace URIs so that we can provide
1153 namespace URI completion on extension elements or with schema-less documents.
1154
1155 **** Allow validation to handle XInclude.
1156
1157 **** ID/IDREF support.
1158
1159 *** Completion
1160
1161 **** Make it work with icomplete. Only use a function to complete when
1162 some of the possible names have undeclared namespaces.
1163
1164 **** How should C-return in mixed text work?
1165
1166 **** When there's a vacuous schema, C-return after < will insert the end-tag.
1167 Is this a bug or a feature?
1168
1169 **** After completing start-tag, ensure we don't get unhelpful message
1170 from validation
1171
1172 **** Syntax table for completion.
1173
1174 **** Should complete start-tag name with a space if namespace attributes
1175 are required.
1176
1177 **** When completing start-tag name with no prefix and it doesn't match
1178 should try to infer namespace from local name.
1179
1180 **** Should completion pay attention to characters after point? If so, how?
1181
1182 **** When completing start-tag name, add required atts if only one required
1183 attribute.
1184
1185 **** When completing attribute name, add attribute value if only one value
1186 is possible.
1187
1188 **** After attribute-value completion, insert space after close delimiter
1189 if more attributes are required.
1190
1191 **** Complete on enumerated data values in elements.
1192
1193 **** When in context that allows only elements, should get tag
1194 completion without having to type < first.
1195
1196 **** When immediately after start-tag name, and name is valid and not
1197 prefix of any other name, should C-return complete on attribute names?
1198
1199 **** When completing attributes, more consistent to ignore all attributes
1200 after point.
1201
1202 **** Inserting attribute value completions needs to be sensitive to what
1203 delimiter is used so that it quotes the correct character.
1204
1205 **** Complete on encoding-names in XML decl.
1206
1207 **** Complete namespace declarations by searching for all namespaces
1208 mentioned in the schema.
1209
1210 *** Well-formed XML support
1211
1212 **** Deal better with Mule-UCS
1213
1214 **** Deal with UTF-8 BOM when reading.
1215
1216 **** Complete entity names.
1217
1218 **** Provide some support for entity names for MathML.
1219
1220 **** Command to repeat the last tag.
1221
1222 **** Support for changing between character references and characters.
1223 Need to check that context is one in which character references are
1224 allowed. xmltok prolog parsing will need to distinguish parameter
1225 literals from other kinds of literal.
1226
1227 **** Provide a comment command to bind to M-; that works better than the
1228 normal one.
1229
1230 **** Make indenting in a multi-line comment work.
1231
1232 **** Structure view. Separate buffer displaying element tree.
1233 Be able to navigate from structure view to document and vice-versa.
1234
1235 **** Flash matching >.
1236
1237 **** Smart selection command that selects increasingly large syntactically
1238 coherent chunks of XML. If point is in an attribute value, first
1239 select complete value; then if command is repeated, select value plus
1240 delimiters, then select attribute name as well, then complete
1241 start-tag, then complete element, then enclosing element, etc.
1242
1243 **** ispell integration.
1244
1245 **** Block-level items in mixed content should be indented, e.g:
1246 <para>This is list:
1247 <ul>
1248 <li>item</li>
1249
1250 **** Provide option to indent like this:
1251 <para>This is a paragraph
1252 occupying multiple lines.</para>
1253
1254 **** Option to add make a / that closes a start-tag electrically insert a
1255 space for the XHTML guys.
1256
1257 **** C-M-q should work.
1258
1259 *** Datatypes
1260
1261 **** Figure out workaround for CJK characters with regexps.
1262
1263 **** Does category C contain Cn?
1264
1265 **** Do ENTITY datatype properly.
1266
1267 *** XML Parsing Library
1268
1269 **** Parameter entity parsing option, nil (never), t (always),
1270 unless-standalone (unless standalone="yes" in XML declaration).
1271
1272 **** When a file is currently being edited, there should be an option to
1273 use its buffer instead of the on-disk copy.
1274
1275 *** Handling all XML features
1276
1277 **** Provide better support for editing external general parsed entities.
1278 Perhaps provide a way to force ignoring undefined entities; maybe turn
1279 this on automatically with <?xml encoding=""?> (with no version
1280 pseudo-att).
1281
1282 **** Handle internal general entity declarations containing elements.
1283
1284 **** Handle external general entity declarations.
1285
1286 **** Handle default attribute declarations in internal subset.
1287
1288 **** Handle parameter entities (including DTD).
1289
1290 *** RELAX NG
1291
1292 **** Do complete schema checking, at least optionally.
1293
1294 **** Detect include/external loops during schema parse.
1295
1296 **** Coding system detection for schemas. Should use utf-8/utf-16 per the
1297 spec. But also need to allow encodings other than UTF-8/16 to support
1298 CJK charsets that Emacs cannot represent in Unicode.
1299
1300 *** Catching XML errors
1301
1302 **** Check public identifiers.
1303
1304 **** Check default attribute values.
1305
1306 *** Performance
1307
1308 **** Explore whether overlay-recenter can cure overlays performance problems.
1309
1310 **** Cache schemas. Need to have list of files and mtimes.
1311
1312 **** Make it possible to reduce rng-validate-chunk-size significantly,
1313 perhaps to 500 bytes, without bad performance impact: don't do
1314 redisplay on every chunk; pass continue functions on other uses of
1315 rng-do-some-validation.
1316
1317 **** Cache after first tag.
1318
1319 **** Introduce a new name class that is a choice between names (so that
1320 we can use member)
1321
1322 **** intern-choice should simplify after patterns with same 1st/2nd args
1323
1324 **** Large numbers of overlays slow things down dramatically. Represent
1325 errors using text properties. This implies we cannot incrementally
1326 keep track of the number of errors, in order to determine validity.
1327 Instead, when validation completes, scan for any characters with an
1328 error text property; this seems to be fast enough even with large
1329 buffers. Problem with error at end of buffer, where there's no
1330 character; need special variable for this. Need to merge face from
1331 font-lock with the error face: use :inherit attribute with list of two
1332 faces. How do we avoid making rng-valid depend on nxml-mode?
1333
1334 *** Error recovery
1335
1336 **** Don't stop at newline in looking for close of start-tag.
1337
1338 **** Use indentation to guide recovery from mismatched end-tags
1339
1340 **** Don't keep parsing when currently not well-formed but previously
1341 well-formed
1342
1343 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag by popping an open element if
1344 there was a mismatched end-tag unaccounted for.
1345
1346 **** Try to recover from a bad start-tag open on the hypothesis that there
1347 was an error in the namespace URI.
1348
1349 **** Better recovery from ill-formed XML declarations.
1350
1351 *** Usability improvements
1352
1353 **** Should print a "Parsing..." message during long movements.
1354
1355 **** Provide better position for reference to undefined pattern error.
1356
1357 **** Put Well-formed in the mode-line when validating against any-content.
1358
1359 **** Trim marking of illegal data for leading and trailing whitespace.
1360
1361 **** Show Invalid status as soon as we are sure it's invalid, rather than
1362 waiting for everything to be completely up to date.
1363
1364 **** When narrowed, Valid or Invalid status should probably consider only
1365 validity of narrowed region.
1366
1367 *** Bug fixes
1368
1369 **** Need to give an error for a document like: <foo/><![CDATA[ ]]>
1370
1371 **** Make nxml-forward-balanced-item work better for the prolog.
1372
1373 **** Make filling and indenting comments work in the prolog.
1374
1375 **** Should delete RNC Input buffers.
1376
1377 **** Figure out what regex use for NCName and use it consistently,
1378
1379 **** Should have not-well-formed tokens in ref.
1380
1381 **** Require version in XML declaration? Probably not because prevents
1382 use for external parsed entities. At least forbid standalone without version.
1383
1384 **** Reject schema that compiles to rng-not-allowed-ipattern.
1385
1386 **** Move point backwards on schema parse error so that it's on the right token.
1387
1388 *** Internal
1389
1390 **** Use rng-quote-string consistently.
1391
1392 **** Use parsing library for XML to texinfo conversion.
1393
1394 **** Rename xmltok.el to nxml-token.el. Use nxml-t- prefix instead of
1395 xmltok-. Change nxml-t-type to nxml-t-token-type, nxml-t-start to
1396 nxml-t-token-start.
1397
1398 **** Can we set fill-prefix to nil and rely on indenting?
1399
1400 **** xmltok should make available replacement text of entities containing
1401 elements
1402
1403 **** In rng-valid, instead of using modification-hooks and
1404 insert-behind-hooks on dependent overlays, use same technique as nxml-mode.
1405
1406 *** Fontification
1407
1408 **** Allow face to depend on element qname, attribute qname, attribute
1409 value. Use list with pairs of (R . F), where R specifies regexps and
1410 F specifies faces. How can this list be made to depend on the document type?
1411
1412 *** Other
1413
1414 **** Support RELAX NG XML syntax (use XML parsing library).
1415
1416 **** Support W3C XML Schema (use XML parsing library).
1417
1418 **** Command to infer schema from current document (like trang).
1419
1420 *** Schemas
1421
1422 **** XSLT schema should take advantage of RELAX NG to express cooccurrence
1423 constraints on attributes (e.g. xsl:template).
1424
1425 *** Documentation
1426
1427 **** Move material from README to manual.
1428
1429 **** Document encodings.
1430
1431 *** Notes
1432
1433 **** How can we allow an error to be displayed on a different token from
1434 where it is detected? In particular, for a missing closing ">" we
1435 will need to display it at the beginning of the following token. At the
1436 moment, when we parse the following token the error overlay will get cleared.
1437
1438 **** How should rng-goto-next-error deal with narrowing?
1439
1440 **** Perhaps should merge errors having same start position even if they
1441 have different ends.
1442
1443 **** How to handle surrogates? One possibility is to be compatible with
1444 utf8.e: represent as sequence of 4 chars. But utf-16 is incompatible
1445 with this.
1446
1447 **** Should we distinguish well-formedness errors from invalidity errors?
1448 (I think not: we may want to recover from a bad start-tag by implying
1449 an end-tag.)
1450
1451 **** Seems to be a bug with Emacs, where a mouse movement that causes
1452 help-echo text to appear counts as pending input but does not cause
1453 idle timer to be restarted.
1454
1455 **** Use XML to represent this file.
1456
1457 **** I had a TODO which said simply "split-string". What did I mean?
1458
1459 **** Investigate performance on large files all on one line.
1460
1461 *** Issues for Emacs versions >= 22
1462
1463 **** Take advantage of UTF-8 CJK support.
1464
1465 **** Supply a next-error-function.
1466
1467 **** Investigate this NEWS item "Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding
1468 systems for HTML/XML files automatically."
1469
1470 **** Take advantage of the pointer text property.
1471
1472 **** Leverage char-displayable-p.
1473
1474 ** RefTeX
1475
1476 *** Provide a wdired-like mode for editing RefTeX TOC buffers.
1477 As a first step, renaming of sections could be supported. Ultimately,
1478 it would be great if it also supported moving sections, e.g., by
1479 killing and yanking or providing org-mode like "move section
1480 upwards/downwards" commands. However, that's not so easy in the
1481 presence of multi-file documents.
1482
1483 * Internal changes
1484
1485 ** Cleanup all the GC_ mark bit stuff -- there is no longer any distinction
1486 since the mark bit is no longer stored in the Lisp_Object itself.
1487
1488 ** Refine the 'predicate' arg to read-file-name.
1489 Currently, it mixes up the predicate to apply when doing completion and the
1490 one to use when terminating the selection.
1491
1492 ** Merge ibuffer.el and buff-menu.el.
1493 More specifically do what's needed to make ibuffer.el the default,
1494 or just an extension of buff-menu.el.
1495
1496 ** Replace linum.el with nlinum.el
1497 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-08/msg00379.html
1498
1499 ** Merge sendmail.el and messages.el.
1500 Probably not a complete merge, but at least arrange for messages.el to be
1501 a derived mode of sendmail.el. Or arrange for messages.el to be split
1502 into a small core and "the rest" so that we use less resources as long as
1503 we stick to the features provided in sendmail.el.
1504
1505 ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
1506 GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
1507 that apparently loses under Solaris, at least. [fx has mostly done
1508 this.]
1509
1510 ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
1511 It might be better to replace it with Lisp, using the byte compiler.
1512 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-06/msg00037.html
1513
1514 ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
1515 offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
1516 comint-derived mode. I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el/inf-lisp.el generic.
1517 For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, lisp-mode,
1518 haskell-mode, tuareg-mode, ...
1519
1520 ** Add "link" button class
1521 Add a standard button-class named "link", and make all other link-like
1522 button classes inherit from it. Set the default face of the "link" button
1523 class to the standard "link" face.
1524
1525 * Wishlist items:
1526
1527 ** Maybe replace etags.c with a Lisp implementation.
1528 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-06/msg00354.html
1529
1530 ** Maybe replace lib-src/rcs2log with a Lisp implementation.
1531 It wouldn't have to be a complete replacement, just enough
1532 for vc-rcs-update-changelog.
1533
1534 * Other known bugs:
1535
1536 ** 'make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
1537
1538 ** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
1539 not be noticed if it appears within a word.
1540
1541 \f
1542 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1543
1544 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1545 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1546 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1547 (at your option) any later version.
1548
1549 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1550 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1551 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1552 GNU General Public License for more details.
1553
1554 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1555 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1556
1557 ;; Local Variables:
1558 ;; coding: utf-8
1559 ;; End: