source: trunk/texinfo/TODO@ 2656

$Id: TODO,v 1.26 2004/11/22 23:57:32 karl Exp $
This is the todo list for GNU Texinfo.
If you are interested in working on any of these, email bug-texinfo@gnu.org.

  Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 
  2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Free Software Foundation.

  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
  notice and this notice are preserved.

* General:
  - @euro{}.
  - Support installation of manuals in different languages, along these lines:
    . support a LINGUAS file or variable saying which subdirs LL in the
      source to descend into (under doc/).
    . within each subdir LL, install the info files into $infodir/LL,
      and run install-info on $infodir/LL/dir.
    . info (both emacs and standalone) should read $infodir/$LANG/dir
      as the first dir file, and likewise read info files first from
      $infodir/$LANG, before falling back to $infodir.
    . consider ways to avoid installing images in both places.
      In fact, images probably need to be installed in a subdir
      $infodir/MANUAL/ in the first place, to avoid conflicts of having
      the same image name in different manuals.
    For a test case, see texinfo cvs, with its one translated manual
    (info-fr.texi).
    From Wojciech Polak.
  - Monitor and improve the dir categories in existing manuals,
    following the Free Software Directory categories.  Much mail to
    developers has already been sent, what's needed now is to check new
    releases and make sure they are using the right categories.
    See the util/dir-example in the Texinfo distribution for our current
    recommended categories.
    For background, see the thread (which discusses a lot of other
    issues too) at
    http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00011.html,
    especially 
      http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00090.html
      http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00137.html
  - Get Info declared as a MIME Content-Type.
  - Likewise the `info:' URI scheme; a library consortium has proposed a
    completely different purpose for the URI scheme, but I don't know
    how to send comments, despite it being a "request for comments".  Sigh.
    There is mail about this in the bug-texinfo archives:
      http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2003-09/msg00086.html
  - Support compressed image files.
  - Support reference card creation, perhaps by only paying attention to
    sectioning and @def... commands.
  - Allow @end (and other?) commands to be indented in the source.
  - Test for memory leaks, e.g., with valgrind:
    http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/
  - Extend and improve the tests.

* Language:
  - @else for the @if... conditionals.
  - @xindexterm [def] primary [,secondary [,tertiary]]  or some such?
  - Allow subitems and `see' and `see also' in indices.
  - multicolumn * width to take up `the rest'.
  - another table command to take N succeeding items and split them
    into M columns (see eplain).
  - support bibliographies with BibTeX (see web2c/doc for kludge prototype).
  - @flushboth to combine @flushleft and @flushright, for RFC's.
  - @part sectioning command.
  - @exercise/@answer command for, e.g., gawk.
  - Allow @hsep/@vsep at @item, instead of just in template.
  - Support automatic line numbering of examples.
  - Better macro syntax.
  - Better def... command syntax.
  - Allow : in node names for info files, for names like
    `class::method'.  Likewise index entries.  A quoting mechanism such
    as surrounding node names with SPACE BACKSPACE is probably the best
    solution, although this is an incompatible change to Info format, sigh.
  - Glossary/general definition support (dumas msg 28 Nov 2003 17:09:57 +0100).
  - Add support for other Latin 9 (and Latin 2 and Latin 1) characters.

* Makeinfo:
  - Translation of "Appendix" etc. should depend on @doclang not $LANG.
  - Try directory of main source file.
  - Make makeinfo -E just do macro expansion, avoiding all error checks.
    That way, texi2dvi could run makeinfo --iftex -E.
  - A detexinfo program, like detex or delatex.  This command would
    strip all the texinfo commands out, and would be used as a filter on
    the way to a speller.  An option would be to NOT strip comments out.
    makeinfo --no-headers comes close.
  - If node name contains an @ command, complain explicitly.
  - Use @documentlanguage instead of LANG for many translations.
  - HTML: split output by chapter to improve context, per Akim.
    Generate dummy files for all nodes for the sake of cross-references.
  - HTML: support thumbnails.
  - HTML: make images of math, maybe.
  - HTML: allow settable background color, table colors and spacing,
    <head> meta tags, etc.  A la http://texi2html.cvshome.org.  In fact:
  - HTML: have a library of different CSS styles.
    http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2004-01/msg00025.html
  - XML: cannot be loaded directly in a browser; why not?
  - Docbook: &euro; and other entities do not work; does anything work?
  - Rewrite completely to simplify generation of different formats.

* TeX:
  - Use @ as the escape character, and Texinfo syntax generally, in the
    table of contents and index files.  Eliminate all the crazy
    multiple redefinitions of every Texinfo command in different contexts.
  - Support input in any encoding and language, via ec or Latin Modern fonts.
  - Reasonable way to change fonts from the default (some work has been
    done), to allow for PostScript fonts, for example.
  - @multitable: handle @hsep and @vsep.
  - @multitable: repeat table headings if multiple pages long.
  - @multitable: support a heading line concept (<thead> in HTML).
  - Introduce new command to change \bindingoffset.
  - How about using latex2html to produce HTML?
  - Table of contents gets misaligned if there are 10 or more [sub]sections.
  - Use url.sty (or something) to allow linebreak of url's.
  - Include hyperlink \special's in the DVI output for xdvi, etc.
  - PDF: make each letter of the index (A, B, ...) a section in the TOC.
    From Carsten Dominik <dominik@astro.uva.nl>.

* Doc:
  - Include a complete functional summary, as in a reference card, in
    the manual.
  - Improve the manuals, especially for makeinfo, standalone info, etc.
  - new section on doing dedication pages. See gawk.texi
    for an example of doing it in both the tex and info versions.

* Info:
  - Regular expression search.
  - Full-text search across all info files installed on the system.
  - Support character sets other than ISO Latin 1.
  - Perhaps comply with LANGUAGE setting on a per-node basis, to allow
    incremental translation of Texinfo files.
  - Search all nodes of dir file at startup, then can have
    INFO-DIR-SEPARATE-GROUPS and other such.
  - Better dir file merging.
  - Global dir file (as in /etc/conf/dir) and texinfo config file
    specifying which info directories to search.  From Dale Mellor.
    http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/private/gnu-prog-discuss/2003q4/000439.html
  - Steal interface ideas from Lynx: number links, use color, etc.
    Perhaps code from the pinfo viewer can be reused:
    http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/.
  - More sample .infokey files, so people can choose without writing their own.
  - q within help should quit help like C-x 0.
  - Incorporate an X-based viewer, perhaps saxinfo or tkinfo
      http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~boldt/tkinfo/
  - Make "info foo bar" search for bar in foo's index(es) if no menu match.
  - Handle M-n, C-u m, and C-u g like Emacs Info (opening new windows).
  - Write technical definition of Info format.

* install-info:
  - be able to copy the info file to compile-time $infodir, to
    simplify by-hand installation.
  - also support installing HTML files, etc., along with subsidiary
    @image (or other) files.  In subdirs.  Or something.
  - support info dir entries for other than the current info file name;
    see comments in menu_item_equal.
  - merge features with Debian install-info, so we can have one program.

* texindex:
  - read source file (specified by new option) for @documentlanguage
    and/or @documentencoding, and change the sorting appropriately.
  From: Wojciech Polak, 26 Apr 2003 11:30:59 +0200.

* Distribution:
  - generate txi-??.tex from .po's to make translators' jobs easier.
    From Akim and Karl E.

Ideas that will not be implemented:
- Process Texinfo files directly instead of converting to Info:
  ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/people/phelps/tcltk/tkman.tar.Z, which
  uses Tcl/Tk 8.0 from ftp.smli.com in the /pub/tcl directory.
  From: phelps@ecstasy.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Phelps)
  [This has the disadvantage of needing to be updated when the
  Texinfo language changes, so don't.]

- Call Ghostscript to get ASCII/jpg output for the @image command.
  [makeinfo should not try to be make, or assume it knows how the user
   wants to generate images.  Too many different methods are possible.]

- Change bars.  This is difficult or impossible in TeX,
  unfortunately.  To do it right requires device driver support.
  wdiff or ediff may be all we can do.  Merely specifying what should be
  changed is not obvious.