Emacs TODO List -*-outline-*-
-Copyright (C) 2001-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.
Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be prepared to sign
legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work to the FSF.
-For more details on this, see the section "Copyright Assignment"
-in etc/CONTRIBUTE. That file also contains some more practical
-details about getting involved.
+Copyright assignment is a simple process. Residents of some countries
+can do it entirely electronically. We can help you get started, and
+answer any questions you may have (or point you to the people with the
+answers), at the emacs-devel@gnu.org mailing list.
+
+For more information about getting involved, see the CONTRIBUTE file.
As well as the issues listed here, there are bug reports at
<http://debbugs.gnu.org>. Bugs tagged "easy" ought to be suitable for
functions don't go through Ffuncall/funcall_lambda/exec_byte_code but instead
stay within exec_byte_code.
-** Add new `switch' byte-code
+** Add new 'switch' byte-code
This byte-code would take one argument from the stack (the object to test)
and one argument from the constant-pool (a switch table, implemented as an
eq-hashtable) and would jump to the "label" contained in the hashtable.
-Then add a `case' special-form that can be compiled to this byte-code.
+Then add a 'case' special-form that can be compiled to this byte-code.
This would behave just like cl-case, but instead of expanding to cond+eq it
would be its own special form and would be compiled specially.
-Then change pcase to use `case' when applicable.
+Then change pcase to use 'case' when applicable.
Then change the byte-compiler to recognize (cond ((eq x 'foo) bar) ...)
-and turn it into a `case' for more efficient execution.
+and turn it into a 'case' for more efficient execution.
** Improve the byte-compiler to recognize immutable (lexical) bindings
and get rid of them if they're used only once and/or they're bound to
defsubst can often end up generating things like
(funcall (lambda (arg) (body)) actual) which then get optimized to
(let ((arg actual)) (body)) but should additionally get optimized further
-when `actual' is a constant/copyable expression.
+when 'actual' is a constant/copyable expression.
** Add an "indirect goto" byte-code and use it for local lambda expressions.
E.g. when you have code like
(funcall foo toto)
(blabla (funcall foo titi))))
-turn those `funcalls' into jumps and their return into indirect jumps back.
+turn those 'funcalls' into jumps and their return into indirect jumps back.
** Compile efficiently local recursive functions
** Check what minor modes don't use define-minor-mode and convert them
to use it.
-** Convert all defvars with leading `*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
+** Convert all defvars with leading '*' in the doc-strings into defcustoms
of appropriate :type and :group.
-** Remove any leading `*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
+** Remove any leading '*'s from defcustom doc-strings.
[done?] [A lot of them are in CC Mode.]
** Remove unnecessary autoload cookies from defcustoms.
** Add a defcustom that supplies a function to name numeric backup files,
like make-backup-file-name-function for non-numeric backup files.
-** `dired-mode' should specify the semantics of `buffer-modified-p' for
-dired buffers and DTRT WRT `auto-revert-mode'.
+** 'dired-mode' should specify the semantics of 'buffer-modified-p' for
+dired buffers and DTRT WRT 'auto-revert-mode'.
** Check uses of prin1 for error-handling.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-08/msg00456.html
*** Several text-property planes
This would get us rid of font-lock-face property (and I'd be happy to
get rid of char-property-alias-alist as well) since font-lock would
-simply use the `face' property in the `font-lock' plane.
+simply use the 'face' property in the 'font-lock' plane.
-Basically `put-text-property' and friends would take an extra argument PLANE
+Basically 'put-text-property' and friends would take an extra argument PLANE
(maybe the best backward-compatible way to do that is to make it so that
PROPERTY can be a cons cell (PLANE . PROP)). So font-lock would
do (put-text-property start end '(font-lock . face) value).
All the properties coming from the various planes would get merged via an Elisp
-function (so it can merge `face' differently than `keymap' or it could give
+function (so it can merge 'face' differently than 'keymap' or it could give
different priorities to different planes (we could imagine enabling/disabling
planes)). The merging would not happen lazily while looking up properties but
-instead it would take place eagerly in `add-text-properties'. This is based on
+instead it would take place eagerly in 'add-text-properties'. This is based on
the idea that it's much more frequent to lookup properties than to
modify them. Also, when properties are looked up during redisplay, we
generally can't run Elisp code, whereas we generally can do that when
Currently overlays are implemented as (two) sorted singly linked lists (one
for overlays_before some position and one for overlay_after that
position, for some quirky definition of "before" and "after").
-The function `overlay-recenter' changes the position used for the split
+The function 'overlay-recenter' changes the position used for the split
(and is called internally in various situations).
Each overlay is itself implemented with two markers (which keep track of
** Allow frames(terminals) created by emacsclient to inherit their environment
from the emacsclient process.
-** Remove the default toggling behavior of minor modes when called from elisp
-rather than interactively. This a trivial one-liner in easy-mode.el.
-
** Give Tar mode all the features of Archive mode.
-** Create a category of errors called `process-error'
+** Create a category of errors called 'process-error'
for some or all errors associated with using subprocesses.
-** Maybe reinterpret `parse-error' as a category of errors
+** Maybe reinterpret 'parse-error' as a category of errors
and put some other errors under it.
-** A function to tell you the argument pattern of functions.
- See `function-arity' in http://www.loveshack.ukfsn.org/emacs/fx-misc.el.
-
** Make byte-compile warn when a doc string is too wide.
** Make byte-optimization warnings issue accurate line numbers.
customization buffers.
** Emacs Lisp mode could put an overlay on the defun for every
- function that has advice. The overlay could have `after-text' like
+ function that has advice. The overlay could have 'after-text' like
" [Function has advice]". It might look like (defun foo [Function
has advice] (x y) The overlay could also be a button that you could
use to view the advice.
H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
-*** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like `begin' and `end'.
+*** recognize multi-character syntactic entities like 'begin' and 'end'.
*** nested string-delimiters (for PostScript's (foo(bar)baz) strings).
*** support for infix operators (with precedence).
*** support for the $ (paired delimiter) in parse-partial-sexp.
** Give start-process the ability to direct standard-error
output to a different filter.
-** Make desktop.el save the "frame configuration" of Emacs (in some
- useful sense).
-
** Give desktop.el a feature to switch between different named desktops.
** Add a cpio mode, more or less like tar mode.
Check the assignments file for other packages which might go in and
have been missed.
-** Make keymaps a first-class Lisp object (this means a rewrite of
- keymap.c). What should it do apart from being opaque ?
- multiple inheritance ? faster where-is ? no more fix_submap_inheritance ?
- what else ?
-
-** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
- macros in cl-macs. [Is this still relevant now that cl-lib exists?]
-
** Make compiler warnings about functions that might be undefined at run time
smarter, so that they know which files are required by the file being
compiled and don't warn about functions defined in them.
-** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs). Already in CUA,
- but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
- [Basic support added 2013/10:
- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00904.html ]
-
** Split out parts of lisp.h.
** Update the FAQ.
** Allow auto-compression-mode to use zlib calls if zlib is available.
[It's required for PNG, so may be linked anyhow.]
-** Add a --pristine startup flag which does -q --no-site-file plus
- ignoring X resources (Doze equivalents?) and most of the
- environment. What should not be ignored needs consideration.
- [Do the existing -Q and -D cover this, or is more needed?]
-
** Improve the GC (generational, incremental). (We may be able to use
the Boehm collector.) [See the Boehm-GC branch in CVS for work on this.]
(Requires recursing through display properties). Provide some way
to simulate mouse-clicks on marginal text without a mouse.
-** Implement Lisp functions to determine properly whether a character
- is displayable (particularly needed in XFree 4, sigh). Use it to
- define useful glyphs that may be displayed as images or unicodes
- (with ASCIIfied fallback via latin1-disp). Examples include
- box-drawing graphics in Custom buffers, W3 rules and tables, and
- tree displays generally, mode-line mail indicator. [See work done
- already for Emacs 23 and consult fx.]
-
** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
encodings.
-** Make byte-compile avoid binding an expanded defsubst's args
- when the body only calls primitives.
-
** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
colors of the applicable faces.
-** Make `format-time-string' preserve text properties like `format'.
+** Make 'format-time-string' preserve text properties like 'format'.
** Optionally make the cursor a little thinner at the end of a line
or the end of the buffer.
the XPMs so that the color versions work generally. (Requires care
with the color used for the transparent regions.)
-** Convenient access to the `values' variable. It would be nice to have an
+** Convenient access to the 'values' variable. It would be nice to have an
interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
- other variable, without changing the value of `values'.
+ other variable, without changing the value of 'values'.
** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
- i.e. `(' doesn't match `]'.
+ i.e. '(' doesn't match ']'.
-** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to `file-attributes' and
- `directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
+** Specify parameter ID-FORMAT in all calls to 'file-attributes' and
+ 'directory-files-and-attributes' where attributes UID or GID are used.
Whenever possible, use value 'string.
When done, change meaning of default value from 'integer to 'string.
If value 'integer is used nowhere, remove the parameter ID-FORMAT from
- the definition of `file-attributes' and `directory-files-and-attributes'
+ the definition of 'file-attributes' and 'directory-files-and-attributes'
and from the calls.
** Make language-info-alist customizable. Currently a user can customize
- only the variable `current-language-environment'.
+ only the variable 'current-language-environment'.
** Improve language environment handling so that Emacs can fit
better to a users locale. Currently Emacs uses utf-8 language
characters and phrase boundaries, sentence endings, collation for
sorting (at least for unicodes), HTTP Accept-language, patterns for
directory listings and compilation messages, yes-or-no replies,
- common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... `locale-info'
+ common menu items when the toolkit supports it ... 'locale-info'
needs extending for LC_COLLATE &c. [fx started on this.]
** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
Info, but also with regard to namespace), and give the value of
lisp expressions, e.g auto-mode-alist, the right face.
-** Possibly make `list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
+** Possibly make 'list-holidays' eval items in the calendar-holidays variable.
See thread
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-02/msg01034.html>.
[rgm@gnu.org will look at this after 22.1]
** NeXTstep port
+*** Missing features
+
+This sections contains features found in other official Emacs ports.
+
+**** Support for xwidgets
+
+Emacs 25 has support for xwidgets, a system to include operating
+system components into an Emacs buffer. The components range from
+simple buttons to webkit (effectively, a web browser).
+
+Currently, xwidgets works only for the gtk+ framework but it is
+designed to be compatible with multiple Emacs ports.
+
+**** Respect 'frame-inhibit-implied-resize'
+
+When the variable 'frame-inhibit-implied-resize' is non-nil, frames
+should not be resized when operations like changing font or toggling
+the tool bar is performed.
+
+Unfortunately, the tool bar (and possible other operations) always
+resize the frame.
+
+**** Support 'proced' (implement 'process-attributes')
+
+Unfortunately, a user-level process like Emacs does not have the
+privileges to get information about other processes under OS X.
+
+There are other ways to do this:
+
+ 1) Spawn "ps" and parse the output ("ps" has superuser privileges).
+
+ 2) Sign Emacs as part of the distribution process.
+
+ 3) Ask the user to self-sign Emacs, if this feature is of interest.
+
+Anders Lindgren <andlind@gmail.com> has implemented
+'process-attributes' for OS X, which currently only work when
+running Emacs as root.
+
+See this article by Bozhidar Batsov for an overview of Proced:
+http://emacsredux.com/blog/2013/05/02/manage-processes-with-proced/
+
+**** Tooltip properties
+
+Tooltip properties like the background color and font are hard-wired,
+even though Emacs allows a user to customize such features.
+
+*** New features
+
+This section contains features unique to Nextstep and/or OS X.
+
+**** PressAndHold for writing accented character
+
+On OS X, many application support the press and hold pattern to
+invoke a menu of accented characters. (See example at
+https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201586 .)
+
+Currently, this doesn't work in Emacs.
+
+Note that "ns-win.el" explicitly disables this.
+
+Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
+implemented in Emacs for a free system.
+
+**** Floating scroll bars
+
+In modern OS X applications, the scroll bar often floats over the
+content, and is invisible unless actually used. This makes the user
+interface less cluttered and more area could be used to contain text.
+
+With floating scroll bars, the user interface would look like it does
+when they are disabled today. However, they will be made visible when
+a scroll action is initiated, e.g. by putting two fingers on a
+trackpad.
+
+Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
+implemented in Emacs for a free system.
+
+*** Features from the "mac" port
+
+This section contains features available in the "mac" Emacs port.
+
+As the "mac" port (as of this writing) isn't an official Emacs port,
+it might contain features not following the FSF rule "must exist on
+free systems".
+
+The "mac" port is based on the Emacs 22 C-based Carbon interface.
+It has been maintained in parallel to the official Cocoa-based NS
+interface. The Carbon interface has been enhanced, and a number of the
+features of that interface could be implemented NS.
+
+**** Smooth scrolling -- maybe not a good idea
+
+Today, by default, scrolling with a trackpad makes the text move in
+steps of five lines. (Scrolling with SHIFT scrolls one line at a time.)
+
+The "mac" port provides smooth, pixel-based, scrolling. This is a very
+popular features. However, there are drawbacks to this method: what
+happens if only a fraction of a line is visible at the top of a
+window, is the partially visible text considered part of the window or
+not? (Technically, what should 'window-start' return.)
+
+An alternative would be to make one-line scrolling the default on NS
+(or in Emacs in general).
+
+Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
+implemented in Emacs for a free system.
+
+**** Mouse gestures
+
+The "mac" port defines the gestures 'swipe-left/right/up/down',
+'magnify-up/down', and 'rotate-left/right'.
+
+It also binds the magnification commands to change the font
+size. (This should be not be done in a specific interface, instead
+Emacs should do this binding globally.)
+
+Note: This feature might not be allowed to be implemented until also
+implemented in Emacs for a free system.
+
+**** Synthesize bold fonts
+
+*** Open issues
+
+This section contains issues where there is an ongoing debate.
+
+**** Key bindings of CMD and ALT
+
+Currently in the "ns" port, ALT is bound to Meta and CMD is bound to
+Super -- allowing the user to use typical OS X commands like CMD-A to
+mark everything.
+
+Unfortunately, when using an international keyboard, you can't type
+normal characters like "(" etc.
+
+There are many alternative key bindings. One solution is to bind CMD
+to Meta and pass ALT to the system. In fact, this is what Emacs did up
+to, and including, version 22. Also, this is how the "mac" port binds
+the keys.
+
+One could envision asymmetrical variants as well, however, this is
+inappropriate for the default setting.
+
+See the discussion on emacs-devel:
+https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-12/msg01575.html
+https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-01/msg00008.html
+
+*** Internal development features
+
+**** Regression test system (or at least a checklist)
+
+Today, after each change to the user interface, Emacs must be manually
+tested. Often, small details are overlooked ("Oh, I didn't test
+toggling the tool-bar in one of the full screen modes, when multiple
+frame were open -- silly me.")
+
+It would be an enormous help if this could be tested automatically.
+Many features are generic, however, the NS interface provides a number
+of unique features.
+
+**** Existing packages
+
+Note that there is a generic UI test named frame-test.el, see
+http://debbugs.gnu.org/21415#284 .
+The NS interface passes this, with the exception of two toolbar-related errors.
+
+**** Anders frame test
+
+Anders Lindgren <andlind@gmail.com> has implemented some (very basic)
+tests for full screen, toolbar, and auto-hiding the menu bar.
+
+**** Make sure all build variants work
+
+Emacs can be build in a number of different ways. For each feature,
+consider if is really is "NS" specific, or if it should be applied to
+all build versions.
+
+- With the "NS" interface. This is the normal way to build Emacs on OS X.
+
+- With the "X11" interface. On OS X, this is mainly of interest to
+ developers of Emacs to get a "reference" interface implementations.
+ However, it might be of interest for people working remotely, as X11
+ applications can be used over a network connection.
+
+- Console only.
+
*** Bugs
+**** Incorrect translation of Super modifier with Ctrl or Meta on OS X
+
+When pressing 'M-s-a', Emacs replies "M-s-å is undefined". What
+happened is a mix of Emacs view that Meta and Super has been pressed,
+and OS X view that ALT-a should yield "å" (U+00E5 LATIN SMALL LETTER A
+WITH RING ABOVE).
+
+The bug reports suggest two different patches; unfortunately, neither
+works properly. For example:
+
+ Use a Swedish keyboard layout
+
+ (setq ns-alternate-modifier nil)
+
+ "CMD-ALT-9"
+
+Today, this correctly yields that s-] is undefined. With either
+of the two patches, Emacs responds that s-9 was pressed.
+
+More investigation is needed to fix this problem.
+
+Links:
+- http://debbugs.gnu.org/19977
+- http://debbugs.gnu.org/21330
+- http://debbugs.gnu.org/21551
+
+**** Toggling the toolbar in fullheight or maximized modes
+
+The toolbar, in the NS interface, is not considered part of the text
+area. When it is toggled, the Emacs frame change height accordingly.
+
+Unfortunately, this also occurs when the frame is in fullheight or
+maximized modes (N.B. this is not the same as "fullscreen"). The
+effect is that the full frame size either increases (stretching down
+below the lower edge of the screen) or decreases (leaving space
+between the lower edge of the frame and the lower edge of the screen).
+
+A better solution would be for the frame to retain its size,
+i.e. change the text area.
+
+This is related to the 'frame-inhibit-implied-resize' issue.
+
**** The event loop does not redraw.
- A problem is that redraw don't happen during resize,
- because we can't break out from the NSapp loop during resize.
- There was a special trick to detect mouse press in the lower right
- corner and track mouse movements, but this did not work well, and was
- not scalable to the new Lion "resize on every window edge" behavior.
- [As of trunk r109635, 2012-08-15, the event loop no longer polls.]
+A problem is that redraw don't happen during resize,
+because we can't break out from the NSapp loop during resize.
+There was a special trick to detect mouse press in the lower right
+corner and track mouse movements, but this did not work well, and was
+not scalable to the new Lion "resize on every window edge" behavior.
+[As of trunk r109635, 2012-08-15, the event loop no longer polls.]
**** (mouse-avoidance-mode 'banish) then minimize Emacs, will pop window back
up on top of all others (probably fixed in bug#17439)
**** In rng-valid, instead of using modification-hooks and
insert-behind-hooks on dependent overlays, use same technique as nxml-mode.
-**** Port to XEmacs. Issues include: Unicode (XEmacs seems to be based on
-Mule-UCS); overlays/text properties vs extents; absence of
-fontification-functions hook.
-
*** Fontification
**** Allow face to depend on element qname, attribute qname, attribute
**** Leverage char-displayable-p.
+** RefTeX
+
+*** Provide a wdired-like mode for editing RefTeX TOC buffers.
+As a first step, renaming of sections could be supported. Ultimately,
+it would be great if it also supported moving sections, e.g., by
+killing and yanking or providing org-mode like "move section
+upwards/downwards" commands. However, that's not so easy in the
+presence of multi-file documents.
+
* Internal changes
** Cleanup all the GC_ mark bit stuff -- there is no longer any distinction
since the mark bit is no longer stored in the Lisp_Object itself.
-** Refine the `predicate' arg to read-file-name.
+** Refine the 'predicate' arg to read-file-name.
Currently, it mixes up the predicate to apply when doing completion and the
one to use when terminating the selection.
* Other known bugs:
-** `make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
+** 'make-frame' forgets unhandled parameters, at least for X11 frames.
** a two-char comment-starter whose two chars are symbol constituents will
not be noticed if it appears within a word.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+;; Local Variables:
+;; coding: utf-8
+;; End: