[Emacs-diffs] Changes to emacs/etc/TODO [gnus-5_10-branch]

[Miles Bader]

Index: emacs/etc/TODO
diff -c /dev/null emacs/etc/TODO:1.69.2.1
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+                                                                 -*-outline-*-
+ 
+ If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we
+ appreciate your help; please write to address@hidden so we can be
+ aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do
+ it best.  Since Emacs is an FSF-copyrighted package, please be
+ prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work
+ to the FSF.
+ 
+ * Small but important fixes needed in existing features:
+ 
+ ** Fix the kill/yank treatment of invisible text. At the moment,
+   invisible text is placed in the kill-ring, so that the contents of
+   the ring may not correspond to the text as displayed to the user. It
+   ought to be possible to omit text which is invisible (due to a
+   text-property, overlay, or selective display) from the kill-ring.
+ 
+ * Important features:
+ 
+ ** Provide user-friendly ways to list all available font families,
+   display a font as a sample, etc.  [fx is looking at multilingual
+   font selection for Emacs 22.]
+ 
+ ** Program Enriched mode to read and save in RTF.  [Is there actually a
+   decent single definition of RTF?  Maybe see info at
+   http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/.]
+ 
+ ** Implement something better than the current Refill mode.  This
+   probably needs some primitive support.
+ 
+ ** Implement primitive and higher-level functions to allow filling
+   properly with variable-pitch faces.
+ 
+ ** Implement a smoother vertical scroll facility, one that allows
+   C-v to scroll through a tall image.
+ 
+ ** Implement other text formatting properties.
+ *** Footnotes that can appear either in place or at the end of the page.
+ *** text property that says "don't break line in middle of this".
+    Don't break the line between two characters that have the
+    same value of this property.
+ *** Discretionary hyphens that are not visible when they are at end of line.
+ 
+ ** Make movemail work with IMAP.
+ 
+ ** Internationalize Emacs's messages.  [Note that this is of limited
+   use until the menus can display multilingual text.  It also doesn't
+   address important issues like using the names of symbols essentially
+   as documentation, e.g. in command names and Custom.  -- fx]
+ 
+ ** Make the Lucid menu widget display multilingual text.  [This
+   probably needs to be done from actual Emacs buffers, either directly
+   in the menu or by rendering in an unmapped window and copying the
+   pixels.  Note that the relevant Xlib functions assume a specific
+   locale; that isn't good enough even if X can render the arbitrary
+   text, which it often can't as far as I can tell.  -- fx] [The gtk
+   port now displays multilingual text in menus, but only insofar as
+   Emacs can encode it as utf-8 and gtk can display the result.]
+ 
+ ** Remove the limitation that window and frame widths and heights can
+   be only full columns/lines.
+ 
+ * Other features we would like:
+ 
+ ** ange-ftp
+ *** understand sftp
+ *** ignore some irrelevant errors (like IPv6 and kerberos thingies).
+ *** Use MLS for ange-ftp-insert-directory if a list of files is specified.
+ 
+ ** Ability to map a key, including all modified-combinations.
+    E.g map mouse-4 to wheel-up as well as M-mouse-4 -> M-wheel-up
+    M-C-mouse-4 -> M-C-wheel-up, H-S-C-M-s-double-mouse-4 ->
+    H-S-C-M-s-double-wheel-up, ...
+ 
+ ** Beefed-up syntax-tables.
+ *** 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.
+ *** support for hook-chars whose effect on the parsing-state is specified
+       by elisp code.  Thus a char could both close a string and open a comment
+       at the same time and do it in a context-sensitive way.
+ *** ability to add mode-specific data to the partial-parse-state.
+ 
+ ** Have a command suggestion help system that recognizes patterns
+   of commands which could be replaced with a simpler common command.
+   It should not make more than one suggestion per 10 minutes.
+ 
+ ** Add a way to define input methods by computing them (when first used)
+   from other input methods.  Then redefine C-x 8 to use a
+   user-selected input method, with the default being the union of
+   latin-1-prefix and latin-1-postfix.
+ 
+ ** Implement a clean way to use different major modes for
+   different parts of a buffer.  This could be useful in editing
+   Bison input files, for instance, or other kinds of text
+   where one language is embedded in another language.
+ 
+ ** 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.
+ 
+ ** Replace finder.el with something that generates an Info file
+   which gives the same information through a menu structure.  [Dave
+   Love started on this.]
+ 
+ ** Implement a variant of uncompress.el or jka-compr.el that works with
+   GNU Privacy Guard for encryption.  [Code exists but isn't assigned.
+   See the Gnus development sources for assigned code concerning GPG
+   use with mail, which is probably a good start.]
+ 
+ ** Save undo information in special temporary files, and reload it
+   when needed for undoing.  This could extend undo capacity.
+ 
+ ** Merge the Emacs regex.c with the Glibc regex.c.
+   They split off a few years ago through negligence.
+ 
+ ** Change the Windows NT menu code
+   so that it handles the deep_p argument and avoids
+   regenerating the whole menu bar menu tree except
+   when the user tries to use the menubar.
+ 
+   This requires the RIT to forward the WM_INITMENU message to
+   the main thread, and not return from that message until the main
+   thread has processed the MENU_BAR_ACTIVATE_EVENT and regenerated
+   the whole menu bar.  In the mean time, it should process other messages.
+ 
+ ** Get some major packages installed: W3 (development version needs
+   significant work), PSGML.  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 ?
+ 
+ ** Provide real menus on ttys.  The MS-DOS implementation can serve as
+   an example how to do part of this.
+ 
+ ** Implement popular parts of the rest of the CL functions as compiler
+   macros in cl-macs.
+ 
+ ** Highlight rectangles (`mouse-track-rectangle-p' in XEmacs).  Already in 
CUA,
+   but it's a valuable feature worth making more general.
+ 
+ ** Support simultaneous tty and X frames.
+ 
+ ** Provide MIME support for Rmail using the Gnus MIME library.  [Maybe
+   not now feasible, given Gnus maintenance decisions.  fx looked at
+   this and can say where some of the problems are.]
+ 
+ ** Eliminate the storm of warnings concerning char/unsigned char
+   mismatches that we get with proprietary compilers on various systems.
+   They make it difficult to spot the important warnings.
+ 
+ ** Fix anything necessary to use `long long' EMACS_INTs with GCC.
+ 
+ ** Split out parts of lisp.h and generate Makefile dependencies
+   automatically.
+ 
+ ** 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.
+ 
+ ** Investigate using the language environment (or locale?) to set up
+   more things, such as the default Ispell dictionary, calendar
+   holidays, quoting characters?,...
+ 
+ ** 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.]
+ 
+ ** Check what hooks would help Emacspeak -- see the defadvising in W3.
+ 
+ ** Add horizontal scroll bars.
+ 
+ ** Provide an optional feature which computes a scroll bar slider's
+   size and its position from lines instead of characters.
+ 
+ ** Make the Custom themes support do useful things.
+ 
+ ** Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering to
+   Emacs.
+ 
+ ** Allow unknown image types to be rendered via an external program
+   converting them to, say, PBM (in the same way as PostScript?).
+ 
+ ** Allow displaying an X window from an external program in a buffer,
+   e.g. to render graphics from Java applets.  [gerd and/or wmperry
+   thought this was feasible.]
+ 
+ ** Allow images (not just text) in the margin to be mouse-sensitive.
+   (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 22 and consult fx.]
+ 
+ ** Do something to make rms happy with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
+   to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
+   access in cases which need more than Lisp.
+ 
+ ** Extend ps-print to deal with multiple font sizes, images, and extra
+   encodings.
+ 
+ ** Provide portable undumping using mmap (per gerd design).
+ 
+ ** Use the XIE X extension, if available, for image display.
+ 
+ ** Make monochrome images display using the foreground and background
+   colors of the applicable faces.
+ 
+ ** Add support for rendering antialiased text, probably using
+   XRender/Freetype.
+ 
+ ** Port the conservative stack marking code of Emacs' garbage collector
+   to more systems, so that we can completely get rid of GCPROs.
+ 
+ ** Reorder defcustom's in each package so that the more important
+   options come first in the Customize buffers.  This could be done by
+   either rearranging the file (since options are shown in the order
+   they appear in the *.el files), or by adding a few :set-after
+   attributes.
+ 
+ ** Maybe document the features of libraries missing from the manual (or
+   ancillary manuals, including the Lisp manual in some cases).
+   This is not worth doing for all of these packages and we need not
+   aim for completeness, but some may be worth documenting.
+ 
+   Here's a list which is probably not complete/correct: align, allout,
+   artist, ansi-color, array, battery, calculator, cdl, cmuscheme,
+   completion, cua, delim-col, dirtrack, double, echistory, elide-head,
+   easymenu, expand, flow-ctrl, format [format-alist],
+   generic/generic-x [various modes], kermit, log-edit, ledit
+   [obsolete?], makesum, midnight [other than in Kill Buffer node],
+   mouse-copy [?], mouse-drag, mouse-sel, net-utils, rcompile,
+   snmp-mode [?], soundex [should be interactive?], strokes [start from
+   the web page], talk, thingatpt [interactive functions?], type-break,
+   vcursor, xscheme, zone-mode [?], mlconvert [?], iso-cvt, iso-swed,
+   swedish, feedmail [?], uce, bruce, gametree, meese, page-ext,
+   refbib, refer, scribe, sgml-mode, spell, texinfo, underline,
+   cmacexp, hideif, mantemp [obsolete?], pcomplete, assoc, xml,
+   cvs-status (should be described in PCL-CVS manual); other progmodes,
+   probably in separate manual.
+ 
+ ** Convert the XPM bitmaps to PPM, replace the PBMs with them and scrap
+   the XPMs so that the colour versions work generally.  (Requires care
+   with the colour used for the transparent regions.)
+ 
+ ** 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'.
+ 
+ ** Fix skip-chars-{for,back}ward to allow character classes.
+ 
+ ** (Controlled by a flag) make open and close syntax match exactly,
+   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.
+   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'
+   and from the calls.
+ 
+ ** Make language-info-alist customizable.  Currently a user can customize
+   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
+   environment for all utf-8 locales, thus a user in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale
+   are also put in utf-8 lang. env.  In such a case, it is
+   better to use Japanese lang. env. but prefer utf-8 coding system.
+ 
+ ** Eliminate the current restriction on header printing by ps-print.
+   Currently, a header can contain only single 1-byte charset in
+   addition to ASCII.
+ 
+ ** In ps-print, provide an user friendly interface to specify fonts.
+ 
+ ** OpenType font support for various complex scripts (e.g. Devanagari).
+   As X protocal doesn't provide a way to access OpenType Layout Tables
+   in a OpenType font of a server side, we need a way to utilize local
+   fonts (perhaps by directly using the Freetype library or indirectly
+   via Xft library).
+ 
+ ** Enhance word boundary detection for such a script that doesn't use
+   space at word boundary (e.g. Thai).
+ 
+ ** Implement interface programs with major Japanese conversion server
+   in lib-src so that they can be used from the input method
+   "japanese".  Currently, most Japanese users are using external
+   packages (e.g. tamago, anthy) or an input method via XIM.
+ 
+ * Internal changes
+ 
+ ** Replace gmalloc.c with the modified Doug Lea code from the current
+   GNU libc so that the special mmapping of buffers can be removed --
+   that apparently loses under Solaris, at least.  [fx has mostly done
+   this.]
+ 
+ ** Rewrite make-docfile to be clean and maintainable.
+ 
+ ** Add an inferior-comint-minor-mode to capture the common set of operations
+    offered by major modes that offer an associated inferior
+    comint-derived mode.  I.e. basically make cmuscheme.el generic.
+    For use by sml-mode, python-mode, tex-mode, scheme-mode, ...
+ 
+ ;;; arch-tag: b0a3e40b-726a-457d-9999-ba848321b036