TO-DO revision 166124
1166124Srafan------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2166124Srafan-- Copyright (c) 1998-2005,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. -- 3166124Srafan-- -- 4166124Srafan-- Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a -- 5166124Srafan-- copy of this software and associated documentation files (the -- 6166124Srafan-- "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including -- 7166124Srafan-- without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, -- 8166124Srafan-- distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell copies -- 9166124Srafan-- of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished -- 10166124Srafan-- to do so, subject to the following conditions: -- 11166124Srafan-- -- 12166124Srafan-- The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included -- 13166124Srafan-- in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. -- 14166124Srafan-- -- 15166124Srafan-- THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS -- 16166124Srafan-- OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF -- 17166124Srafan-- MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN -- 18166124Srafan-- NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, -- 19166124Srafan-- DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR -- 20166124Srafan-- OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE -- 21166124Srafan-- USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. -- 22166124Srafan-- -- 23166124Srafan-- Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright -- 24166124Srafan-- holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the -- 25166124Srafan-- sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written -- 26166124Srafan-- authorization. -- 27166124Srafan------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28166124Srafan-- $Id: TO-DO,v 1.48 2006/10/28 19:49:16 tom Exp $ 29166124Srafan------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3050276Speter 3150276SpeterSHORT-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 3250276Speter 3350276SpeterKnown Problems: 3450276Speter 35166124Srafan+ libtool does not work with GNAT. 3650276Speter 37166124Srafan+ The screen optimization has been tested only in an ad hoc manner. We should 3850276Speter develop a good set of regression tests to cover lib_doupdate.c and 3950276Speter lib_mvcur.c. 4050276Speter 41166124Srafan+ Magic cookie support (for nonzero xmc values) does not work, since the logic 42166124Srafan does not take into account refresh. Also, the initial optimize does not 43166124Srafan adjust the current location when a cookie is emitted. 4450276Speter 45166124Srafan+ Scrolling optimization has holes: for example, it forces repaints of the 4650276Speter screen between calls to refresh(). 4750276Speter 48166124Srafan+ SVr4 uses slightly different rules for determining when softkeys are shown. 4950276Speter For example, they are initially displayed (before the ncurses 'e' test 5050276Speter activates them), and a touchwin can apparently also force them to be 5150276Speter displayed. 5250276Speter 5350276Speter+ The code departs from perfect 8-bit cleanness in one respect; you cannot 54166124Srafan specify a character \200 as part of a capability string, because the 55166124Srafan terminfo library interprets \200 as a request to embed NUL (\000) at that 56166124Srafan point. This is a legacy terminfo property we can't mess with. 5750276Speter 58166124Srafan+ The window classes defined in the c++ subdirectory need documentation. Some 59166124Srafan C++ programmer could earn a lot of good karma by doing this... 6050276Speter 61166124Srafan+ The resizeterm() function does not handle ripped-off lines such as that done 62166124Srafan for the slk_XXX functions. 63166124Srafan 64166124Srafan+ vid_attr() should support the set_a_attributes (sgr1) string, but does not. 65166124Srafan There appear to be no terminals that require that functionality. 66166124Srafan 6750276SpeterPortability (or lack thereof): 6850276Speter 69166124Srafan+ Users of older System V UNIXes (but not Solaris, and probably not SVr4) may 70166124Srafan trip over a known problem with the signal-handling code which causes abrupt 71166124Srafan termination of ncurses applications following resume from a ^Z suspend (this 72166124Srafan problem was first seen running lynx). You will not see this problem if you 73166124Srafan are running Linux or one of the 4.4BSD derivatives like FreeBSD, NetBSD, or 74166124Srafan BSDI. For details, see the analysis in the header comment of 75166124Srafan ncurses/tty/lib_tstp.c . 7650276Speter 77166124Srafan+ In theory, vwprintw and vwscanf are supposed to use the older varargs.h 7850276Speter interface for handling variadic argument lists. Linux doesn't have 79166124Srafan varargs.h, it has the newer X/Open-standard stdargs.h equivalent. So these 80166124Srafan functions use stdargs instead. This is unlikely to be a problem unless 81166124Srafan you're building ncurses on a System V old enough to only have varargs.h. 82166124Srafan (Solaris 2.5.1 uses the stdarg.h binding as well). 8350276Speter 84166124Srafan+ If you're using a BSD earlier than 4.4BSD, or a Linux old enough not to have 85166124Srafan a native vsscanf(3) in its library, vwscanw() will not work. You lose. (It 86166124Srafan should work on any System V, however). If you want to fix this, add an 87166124Srafan implementation to ncurses/vsscanf.c. 8850276Speter 89166124Srafan+ The C++ binding fails to build with a few C++ compilers, mainly with 90166124Srafan configure script problems with vsscanf(). 9150276Speter 9250276Speter+ terminfo.5 does not format with the SunOS (and most other platform's) tbl 93166124Srafan utility because it relies on a diversion for each table entry. Get the 94166124Srafan groff package. 9550276Speter 9650276SpeterUntested features: 9750276Speter 98166124Srafan+ The code for the HP color model using set_color_pair is untested. 9950276Speter 100166124Srafan+ The code for handling soft labels on a terminal type with built-in support 10150276Speter for them (num_labels > 0, label_height, label_width, label_format, label_off, 10250276Speter label_on, plab_norm, lab_f*) has not been tested. The label_format and 10350276Speter lab_f* capabilities aren't presently used. 10450276Speter 10550276SpeterLONGER-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 10650276Speter 10750276Speter1. Extended COSE conformance 10850276Speter 10950276SpeterThere is an XPG4 standard recently released which describes a superset 11050276Speterof the SVr4 API. The library is BASE conformant with this standard. 11150276SpeterWe would like to make ncurses fully conformant at the EXTENDED level 11250276Spetersupporting internationalization. 11350276Speter 11450276Speter2. DOS port 11550276Speter 116166124SrafanOnly a few of the files in the library depend on the terminfo format. 11750276SpeterIt should be possible to further kernelize the package, then rewrite 11850276Spetera small number of core files to produce a functionally-compatible 11950276Speterport that would do updates to a memory-mapped screen area. The first 12050276Speterresult of this would be a DOS port. 12150276Speter 12250276Speter3. X port 12350276Speter 12450276SpeterIt would be nice if ncurses could recognize when it was running under X and 12550276Spetermaintain its own window. With this feature, all ncurses programs would 12650276Speterautomatically become X programs. The challenge is to handle resize events 12750276Speterproperly. 12850276Speter 12950276Speter4. Unused capabilities 13050276Speter 13150276SpeterThe currently unused capabilities fall naturally into several groups: 13250276Speter 13350276SpeterA. Status-line capabilities: 13450276Speter 13550276Speter Booleans: has_status_line, status_line_esc_ok. 13650276Speter Numerics: width_status_line. 13750276Speter Strings: dis_status_line, from_status_line, to_status_line. 13850276Speter 13950276SpeterSystem V Release 1 curses made no use of these at all. SVr4's use, if 14050276Speterany, is unknown. From the AT&T termcap file it looks like curses, in general, 14150276Spetershouldn't use them; terminal variants with status lines have their line count 14250276Speterdecremented by 1, suggesting that curses is supposed to leave the status line 14350276Speteralone. 14450276Speter 14550276SpeterB. Printer capabilities: 14650276Speter 14750276Speter Boolean: col_addr_glitch, cr_cancels_micro_mode, has_print_wheel, 14850276Speter row_addr_glitch, semi_auto_right_margin, cpi_changes_res, 14950276Speter lpi_changes_res. 15050276Speter Numeric: buffer_capacity, dot_horz_spacing, dot_vert_spacing, 15150276Speter max_micro_address, max_micro_jump, micro_col_size, 15250276Speter micro_line_size, number_of_pins, output_res_char, 15350276Speter output_res_line, output_res_horz_inch, print_rate, 15450276Speter wide_char_size, bit_image_entwining, bit_image_type. 15550276Speter String: down_half_line, form_feed, up_half_line, set_left_margin, 15650276Speter set_right_margin, clear_margins, change_char_pitch 15750276Speter ... set_page_length (all the SVr4 printer caps), 15850276Speter 15950276SpeterCurses doesn't use these. 16050276Speter 16150276SpeterC. Printer-control capabilities: 16250276Speter 16350276Speter Boolean: prtr_silent. 16450276Speter Strings: print_screen, prtr_on, prtr_off, prtr_non. 16550276Speter 16650276SpeterCurses doesn't use these. 16750276Speter 16850276SpeterD. Dialer strings: 16950276Speter 17050276Speter Strings: hangup, dial_phone, quick_dial, tone, pulse, flash_hook, 17150276Speter fixed_pause, wait_tone. 17250276Speter 17350276SpeterCurses doesn't use these. 17450276Speter 17550276SpeterE. Window and virtual-terminal capabilities: 17650276Speter 17750276Speter Numerics: maximum_windows, virtual_terminal. 17850276Speter Strings: req_for_input, create_window, goto_window, set_window. 17950276Speter 18050276SpeterThese seem to be fossils from some AT&T experiments on character-based 18150276Speterwindow systems that never escaped the lab. The virtual_terminal cap had 18250276Spetersomething to do with building terminal emulations into tty line disciplines. 18350276Speter 18450276SpeterF. Unused VDT capabilities: 18550276Speter 18650276Speter Booleans: erase_overstrike, has_meta_key, insert_null_glitch, 18750276Speter move_insert, dest_tabs_magic_smso, transparent_underline, 18850276Speter needs_xon_xoff, hard_cursor. 18950276Speter Numerics: lines_of_memory, buttons. 19050276Speter Strings: pkey_key, pkey_local, pkey_xmit, underline_char, 19150276Speter enter_xon_mode, exit_xon_mode, xon_character, xoff_character, 19250276Speter display_clock, remove_clock, user[0-5], display_pc_char, 19350276Speter enter_scancode_mode, exit_scancode_mode, pc_term_options, 19450276Speter scancode_escape, alt_scancode_esc. 19550276Speter 19650276SpeterThese are the potentially important ones for ncurses. Notes: 19750276Speter 19850276Speter i) ncurses doesn't need move_insert; it never uses cup/hpa/vpa while 19950276Speter insert_mode is on. 20050276Speter 20150276Speter ii) We probably don't care about dest_tabs_magic_smso; only 20250276Speter Telerays used it and they're all long obsolete. 20350276Speter 204166124Srafan-- vile:txtmode 205