TO-DO revision 262629
1166124Srafan------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2262629Sdelphij-- Copyright (c) 1998-2010,2011 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------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28262629Sdelphij-- $Id: TO-DO,v 1.57 2011/03/28 00:23:02 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 48262629Sdelphij+ 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 61262629Sdelphij+ vid_attr() should support the set_a_attributes (sgr1) string, but does not. 62166124Srafan There appear to be no terminals that require that functionality. 63166124Srafan 64184989Srafan+ the configure --disable-ext-funcs option does not work for Ada95 tree. 65184989Srafan 66184989Srafan+ the --with-pthread configuration builds for Cygwin, but does not work 67184989Srafan properly (test/worm.c shows all of the worms in the same location). 68184989Srafan 69184989Srafan+ the --enable-rpath configure option builds for the corresponding platforms; 70184989Srafan however combining it with --with-ticlib and --with-termlib does not always 71184989Srafan produce libraries that can be run without setting environment variables. 72184989Srafan Building those with libtool does not work either. (This is a problem with 73184989Srafan the BSD platforms). 74184989Srafan 75262629Sdelphij+ more work is needed to make the MinGW port support ordinary terminals. 76262629Sdelphij 7750276SpeterPortability (or lack thereof): 7850276Speter 79166124Srafan+ Users of older System V UNIXes (but not Solaris, and probably not SVr4) may 80166124Srafan trip over a known problem with the signal-handling code which causes abrupt 81166124Srafan termination of ncurses applications following resume from a ^Z suspend (this 82166124Srafan problem was first seen running lynx). You will not see this problem if you 83262629Sdelphij are using one of the 4.4BSD derivatives like such as, NetBSD, or BSDI, or 84262629Sdelphij systems using that convention. For details, see the analysis in the header 85262629Sdelphij comment of ncurses/tty/lib_tstp.c . 8650276Speter 87166124Srafan+ In theory, vwprintw and vwscanf are supposed to use the older varargs.h 88174993Srafan interface for handling variadic argument lists (and are deprecated by X/Open 89262629Sdelphij for that reason). Many newer systems do no have varargs.h, instead they have 90262629Sdelphij only the newer X/Open-standard stdargs.h equivalent. So these functions use 91262629Sdelphij stdargs instead. This is unlikely to be a problem unless you're building 92262629Sdelphij ncurses on a System V old enough to only have varargs.h. (Solaris 2.5.1 used 93262629Sdelphij the stdarg.h binding as well). 9450276Speter 95262629Sdelphij+ If you're using a system old enough not to have a native vsscanf(3) in its 96262629Sdelphij library, vwscanw() will not work. If you want to fix this, add an 97166124Srafan implementation to ncurses/vsscanf.c. 9850276Speter 99174993Srafan+ The C++ binding fails to build with a few C++ compilers. 10050276Speter 10150276Speter+ terminfo.5 does not format with the SunOS (and most other platform's) tbl 102166124Srafan utility because it relies on a diversion for each table entry. Get the 103166124Srafan groff package. 10450276Speter 10550276SpeterUntested features: 10650276Speter 107166124Srafan+ The code for the HP color model using set_color_pair is untested. 10850276Speter 109166124Srafan+ The code for handling soft labels on a terminal type with built-in support 11050276Speter for them (num_labels > 0, label_height, label_width, label_format, label_off, 11150276Speter label_on, plab_norm, lab_f*) has not been tested. The label_format and 11250276Speter lab_f* capabilities aren't presently used. 11350276Speter 11450276SpeterLONGER-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 11550276Speter 11650276Speter1. Extended COSE conformance 11750276Speter 118174993SrafanThere is an XPG4 standard released in 1996 which describes a superset 11950276Speterof the SVr4 API. The library is BASE conformant with this standard. 12050276SpeterWe would like to make ncurses fully conformant at the EXTENDED level 12150276Spetersupporting internationalization. 12250276Speter 12350276Speter2. DOS port 12450276Speter 125166124SrafanOnly a few of the files in the library depend on the terminfo format. 126262629SdelphijIt should be possible to further kernelize the package, then rewrite 12750276Spetera small number of core files to produce a functionally-compatible 12850276Speterport that would do updates to a memory-mapped screen area. The first 12950276Speterresult of this would be a DOS port. 13050276Speter 13150276Speter3. X port 13250276Speter 13350276SpeterIt would be nice if ncurses could recognize when it was running under X and 13450276Spetermaintain its own window. With this feature, all ncurses programs would 13550276Speterautomatically become X programs. The challenge is to handle resize events 13650276Speterproperly. 13750276Speter 13850276Speter4. Unused capabilities 13950276Speter 14050276SpeterThe currently unused capabilities fall naturally into several groups: 14150276Speter 14250276SpeterA. Status-line capabilities: 14350276Speter 14450276Speter Booleans: has_status_line, status_line_esc_ok. 14550276Speter Numerics: width_status_line. 14650276Speter Strings: dis_status_line, from_status_line, to_status_line. 14750276Speter 14850276SpeterSystem V Release 1 curses made no use of these at all. SVr4's use, if 14950276Speterany, is unknown. From the AT&T termcap file it looks like curses, in general, 15050276Spetershouldn't use them; terminal variants with status lines have their line count 15150276Speterdecremented by 1, suggesting that curses is supposed to leave the status line 15250276Speteralone. 15350276Speter 15450276SpeterB. Printer capabilities: 15550276Speter 15650276Speter Boolean: col_addr_glitch, cr_cancels_micro_mode, has_print_wheel, 15750276Speter row_addr_glitch, semi_auto_right_margin, cpi_changes_res, 15850276Speter lpi_changes_res. 15950276Speter Numeric: buffer_capacity, dot_horz_spacing, dot_vert_spacing, 16050276Speter max_micro_address, max_micro_jump, micro_col_size, 16150276Speter micro_line_size, number_of_pins, output_res_char, 16250276Speter output_res_line, output_res_horz_inch, print_rate, 16350276Speter wide_char_size, bit_image_entwining, bit_image_type. 16450276Speter String: down_half_line, form_feed, up_half_line, set_left_margin, 16550276Speter set_right_margin, clear_margins, change_char_pitch 16650276Speter ... set_page_length (all the SVr4 printer caps), 16750276Speter 16850276SpeterCurses doesn't use these. 16950276Speter 17050276SpeterC. Printer-control capabilities: 17150276Speter 17250276Speter Boolean: prtr_silent. 17350276Speter Strings: print_screen, prtr_on, prtr_off, prtr_non. 17450276Speter 17550276SpeterCurses doesn't use these. 17650276Speter 17750276SpeterD. Dialer strings: 17850276Speter 17950276Speter Strings: hangup, dial_phone, quick_dial, tone, pulse, flash_hook, 18050276Speter fixed_pause, wait_tone. 18150276Speter 18250276SpeterCurses doesn't use these. 18350276Speter 18450276SpeterE. Window and virtual-terminal capabilities: 18550276Speter 18650276Speter Numerics: maximum_windows, virtual_terminal. 18750276Speter Strings: req_for_input, create_window, goto_window, set_window. 18850276Speter 18950276SpeterThese seem to be fossils from some AT&T experiments on character-based 19050276Speterwindow systems that never escaped the lab. The virtual_terminal cap had 19150276Spetersomething to do with building terminal emulations into tty line disciplines. 19250276Speter 19350276SpeterF. Unused VDT capabilities: 19450276Speter 19550276Speter Booleans: erase_overstrike, has_meta_key, insert_null_glitch, 19650276Speter move_insert, dest_tabs_magic_smso, transparent_underline, 19750276Speter needs_xon_xoff, hard_cursor. 19850276Speter Numerics: lines_of_memory, buttons. 199262629Sdelphij Strings: pkey_key, pkey_local, pkey_xmit, underline_char, 200262629Sdelphij enter_xon_mode, exit_xon_mode, xon_character, xoff_character, 20150276Speter display_clock, remove_clock, user[0-5], display_pc_char, 202262629Sdelphij enter_scancode_mode, exit_scancode_mode, pc_term_options, 20350276Speter scancode_escape, alt_scancode_esc. 20450276Speter 20550276SpeterThese are the potentially important ones for ncurses. Notes: 20650276Speter 20750276Speter i) ncurses doesn't need move_insert; it never uses cup/hpa/vpa while 20850276Speter insert_mode is on. 20950276Speter 21050276Speter ii) We probably don't care about dest_tabs_magic_smso; only 21150276Speter Telerays used it and they're all long obsolete. 21250276Speter 213166124Srafan-- vile:txtmode 214