1146515Sru$Id: TODO,v 1.26 2004/11/22 23:57:32 karl Exp $ 2114472SruThis is the todo list for GNU Texinfo. 342660SmarkmIf you are interested in working on any of these, email bug-texinfo@gnu.org. 421495Sjmacd 5146515Sru Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 6146515Sru 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Free Software Foundation. 721495Sjmacd 8114472Sru Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, 9114472Sru are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright 10114472Sru notice and this notice are preserved. 1121495Sjmacd 1242660Smarkm* General: 13146515Sru - @euro{}. 14146515Sru - Support installation of manuals in different languages, along these lines: 15146515Sru . support a LINGUAS file or variable saying which subdirs LL in the 16146515Sru source to descend into (under doc/). 17146515Sru . within each subdir LL, install the info files into $infodir/LL, 18146515Sru and run install-info on $infodir/LL/dir. 19146515Sru . info (both emacs and standalone) should read $infodir/$LANG/dir 20146515Sru as the first dir file, and likewise read info files first from 21146515Sru $infodir/$LANG, before falling back to $infodir. 22146515Sru . consider ways to avoid installing images in both places. 23146515Sru In fact, images probably need to be installed in a subdir 24146515Sru $infodir/MANUAL/ in the first place, to avoid conflicts of having 25146515Sru the same image name in different manuals. 26146515Sru For a test case, see texinfo cvs, with its one translated manual 27146515Sru (info-fr.texi). 28146515Sru From Wojciech Polak. 29146515Sru - Monitor and improve the dir categories in existing manuals, 30146515Sru following the Free Software Directory categories. Much mail to 31146515Sru developers has already been sent, what's needed now is to check new 32146515Sru releases and make sure they are using the right categories. 33146515Sru See the util/dir-example in the Texinfo distribution for our current 34146515Sru recommended categories. 35146515Sru For background, see the thread (which discusses a lot of other 36146515Sru issues too) at 37146515Sru http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00011.html, 38146515Sru especially 39146515Sru http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00090.html 40146515Sru http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00137.html 41114472Sru - Get Info declared as a MIME Content-Type. 42146515Sru - Likewise the `info:' URI scheme; a library consortium has proposed a 43146515Sru completely different purpose for the URI scheme, but I don't know 44146515Sru how to send comments, despite it being a "request for comments". Sigh. 45146515Sru There is mail about this in the bug-texinfo archives: 46146515Sru http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2003-09/msg00086.html 4793139Sru - Support compressed image files. 48146515Sru - Support reference card creation, perhaps by only paying attention to 4942660Smarkm sectioning and @def... commands. 5056160Sru - Allow @end (and other?) commands to be indented in the source. 51146515Sru - Test for memory leaks, e.g., with valgrind: 52146515Sru http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/ 53146515Sru - Extend and improve the tests. 5421495Sjmacd 5542660Smarkm* Language: 56114472Sru - @else for the @if... conditionals. 57114472Sru - @xindexterm [def] primary [,secondary [,tertiary]] or some such? 58146515Sru - Allow subitems and `see' and `see also' in indices. 5993139Sru - multicolumn * width to take up `the rest'. 6093139Sru - another table command to take N succeeding items and split them 6193139Sru into M columns (see eplain). 6256160Sru - support bibliographies with BibTeX (see web2c/doc for kludge prototype). 6342660Smarkm - @flushboth to combine @flushleft and @flushright, for RFC's. 6442660Smarkm - @part sectioning command. 6542660Smarkm - @exercise/@answer command for, e.g., gawk. 6642660Smarkm - Allow @hsep/@vsep at @item, instead of just in template. 6756160Sru - Support automatic line numbering of examples. 6893139Sru - Better macro syntax. 69146515Sru - Better def... command syntax. 70100513Sru - Allow : in node names for info files, for names like 71100513Sru `class::method'. Likewise index entries. A quoting mechanism such 72100513Sru as surrounding node names with SPACE BACKSPACE is probably the best 73100513Sru solution, although this is an incompatible change to Info format, sigh. 74146515Sru - Glossary/general definition support (dumas msg 28 Nov 2003 17:09:57 +0100). 75146515Sru - Add support for other Latin 9 (and Latin 2 and Latin 1) characters. 7621495Sjmacd 77114472Sru* Makeinfo: 78146515Sru - Translation of "Appendix" etc. should depend on @doclang not $LANG. 79114472Sru - Try directory of main source file. 80146515Sru - Make makeinfo -E just do macro expansion, avoiding all error checks. 81146515Sru That way, texi2dvi could run makeinfo --iftex -E. 82114472Sru - A detexinfo program, like detex or delatex. This command would 83114472Sru strip all the texinfo commands out, and would be used as a filter on 84114472Sru the way to a speller. An option would be to NOT strip comments out. 85114472Sru makeinfo --no-headers comes close. 86114472Sru - If node name contains an @ command, complain explicitly. 87146515Sru - Use @documentlanguage instead of LANG for many translations. 88146515Sru - HTML: split output by chapter to improve context, per Akim. 89146515Sru Generate dummy files for all nodes for the sake of cross-references. 90146515Sru - HTML: support thumbnails. 91146515Sru - HTML: make images of math, maybe. 92146515Sru - HTML: allow settable background color, table colors and spacing, 93146515Sru <head> meta tags, etc. A la http://texi2html.cvshome.org. In fact: 94146515Sru - HTML: have a library of different CSS styles. 95146515Sru http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2004-01/msg00025.html 96146515Sru - XML: cannot be loaded directly in a browser; why not? 97146515Sru - Docbook: € and other entities do not work; does anything work? 98114472Sru - Rewrite completely to simplify generation of different formats. 99114472Sru 100114472Sru* TeX: 101114472Sru - Use @ as the escape character, and Texinfo syntax generally, in the 102146515Sru table of contents and index files. Eliminate all the crazy 103114472Sru multiple redefinitions of every Texinfo command in different contexts. 104146515Sru - Support input in any encoding and language, via ec or Latin Modern fonts. 105114472Sru - Reasonable way to change fonts from the default (some work has been 106114472Sru done), to allow for PostScript fonts, for example. 107146515Sru - @multitable: handle @hsep and @vsep. 108146515Sru - @multitable: repeat table headings if multiple pages long. 109146515Sru - @multitable: support a heading line concept (<thead> in HTML). 110146515Sru - Introduce new command to change \bindingoffset. 111114472Sru - How about using latex2html to produce HTML? 112114472Sru - Table of contents gets misaligned if there are 10 or more [sub]sections. 113114472Sru - Use url.sty (or something) to allow linebreak of url's. 114146515Sru - Include hyperlink \special's in the DVI output for xdvi, etc. 115146515Sru - PDF: make each letter of the index (A, B, ...) a section in the TOC. 116146515Sru From Carsten Dominik <dominik@astro.uva.nl>. 117114472Sru 11842660Smarkm* Doc: 11942660Smarkm - Include a complete functional summary, as in a reference card, in 12042660Smarkm the manual. 12193139Sru - Improve the manuals, especially for makeinfo, standalone info, etc. 12293139Sru - new section on doing dedication pages. See gawk.texi 12342660Smarkm for an example of doing it in both the tex and info versions. 12421495Sjmacd 12542660Smarkm* Info: 12656160Sru - Regular expression search. 12756160Sru - Full-text search across all info files installed on the system. 12856160Sru - Support character sets other than ISO Latin 1. 12956160Sru - Perhaps comply with LANGUAGE setting on a per-node basis, to allow 13056160Sru incremental translation of Texinfo files. 13142660Smarkm - Search all nodes of dir file at startup, then can have 13242660Smarkm INFO-DIR-SEPARATE-GROUPS and other such. 13342660Smarkm - Better dir file merging. 134146515Sru - Global dir file (as in /etc/conf/dir) and texinfo config file 135146515Sru specifying which info directories to search. From Dale Mellor. 136146515Sru http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/private/gnu-prog-discuss/2003q4/000439.html 13793139Sru - Steal interface ideas from Lynx: number links, use color, etc. 13893139Sru Perhaps code from the pinfo viewer can be reused: 13993139Sru http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/. 14093139Sru - More sample .infokey files, so people can choose without writing their own. 14142660Smarkm - q within help should quit help like C-x 0. 142146515Sru - Incorporate an X-based viewer, perhaps saxinfo or tkinfo 14356160Sru http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~boldt/tkinfo/ 144146515Sru - Make "info foo bar" search for bar in foo's index(es) if no menu match. 145146515Sru - Handle M-n, C-u m, and C-u g like Emacs Info (opening new windows). 146116525Sru - Write technical definition of Info format. 14721495Sjmacd 14893139Sru* install-info: 149146515Sru - be able to copy the info file to compile-time $infodir, to 15042660Smarkm simplify by-hand installation. 151146515Sru - also support installing HTML files, etc., along with subsidiary 152146515Sru @image (or other) files. In subdirs. Or something. 153146515Sru - support info dir entries for other than the current info file name; 154146515Sru see comments in menu_item_equal. 155146515Sru - merge features with Debian install-info, so we can have one program. 15693139Sru 157116525Sru* texindex: 158116525Sru - read source file (specified by new option) for @documentlanguage 159146515Sru and/or @documentencoding, and change the sorting appropriately. 160146515Sru From: Wojciech Polak, 26 Apr 2003 11:30:59 +0200. 16193139Sru 162146515Sru* Distribution: 163146515Sru - generate txi-??.tex from .po's to make translators' jobs easier. 164146515Sru From Akim and Karl E. 165116525Sru 16693139SruIdeas that will not be implemented: 16793139Sru- Process Texinfo files directly instead of converting to Info: 16893139Sru ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/people/phelps/tcltk/tkman.tar.Z, which 16993139Sru uses Tcl/Tk 8.0 from ftp.smli.com in the /pub/tcl directory. 17093139Sru From: phelps@ecstasy.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Phelps) 17193139Sru [This has the disadvantage of needing to be updated when the 17293139Sru Texinfo language changes, so don't.] 17393139Sru 174146515Sru- Call Ghostscript to get ASCII/jpg output for the @image command. 175146515Sru [makeinfo should not try to be make, or assume it knows how the user 176146515Sru wants to generate images. Too many different methods are possible.] 177146515Sru 178146515Sru- Change bars. This is difficult or impossible in TeX, 179146515Sru unfortunately. To do it right requires device driver support. 180146515Sru wdiff or ediff may be all we can do. Merely specifying what should be 181146515Sru changed is not obvious. 182