1------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2-- Copyright (c) 1998-2006,2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. -- 3-- -- 4-- Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a -- 5-- copy of this software and associated documentation files (the -- 6-- "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including -- 7-- without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, -- 8-- distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell copies -- 9-- of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished -- 10-- to do so, subject to the following conditions: -- 11-- -- 12-- The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included -- 13-- in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. -- 14-- -- 15-- THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS -- 16-- OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF -- 17-- MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN -- 18-- NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, -- 19-- DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR -- 20-- OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE -- 21-- USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. -- 22-- -- 23-- Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright -- 24-- holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the -- 25-- sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written -- 26-- authorization. -- 27------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28-- $Id: TO-DO,v 1.49 2007/02/03 16:29:17 tom Exp $ 29------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 31SHORT-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 32 33Known Problems: 34 35+ libtool does not work with GNAT. 36 37+ The screen optimization has been tested only in an ad hoc manner. We should 38 develop a good set of regression tests to cover lib_doupdate.c and 39 lib_mvcur.c. 40 41+ Magic cookie support (for nonzero xmc values) does not work, since the logic 42 does not take into account refresh. Also, the initial optimize does not 43 adjust the current location when a cookie is emitted. 44 45+ Scrolling optimization has holes: for example, it forces repaints of the 46 screen between calls to refresh(). 47 48+ SVr4 uses slightly different rules for determining when softkeys are shown. 49 For example, they are initially displayed (before the ncurses 'e' test 50 activates them), and a touchwin can apparently also force them to be 51 displayed. 52 53+ The code departs from perfect 8-bit cleanness in one respect; you cannot 54 specify a character \200 as part of a capability string, because the 55 terminfo library interprets \200 as a request to embed NUL (\000) at that 56 point. This is a legacy terminfo property we can't mess with. 57 58+ The window classes defined in the c++ subdirectory need documentation. Some 59 C++ programmer could earn a lot of good karma by doing this... 60 61+ vid_attr() should support the set_a_attributes (sgr1) string, but does not. 62 There appear to be no terminals that require that functionality. 63 64Portability (or lack thereof): 65 66+ Users of older System V UNIXes (but not Solaris, and probably not SVr4) may 67 trip over a known problem with the signal-handling code which causes abrupt 68 termination of ncurses applications following resume from a ^Z suspend (this 69 problem was first seen running lynx). You will not see this problem if you 70 are running Linux or one of the 4.4BSD derivatives like FreeBSD, NetBSD, or 71 BSDI. For details, see the analysis in the header comment of 72 ncurses/tty/lib_tstp.c . 73 74+ In theory, vwprintw and vwscanf are supposed to use the older varargs.h 75 interface for handling variadic argument lists (and are deprecated by X/Open 76 for that reason). Linux doesn't have varargs.h, it has the newer 77 X/Open-standard stdargs.h equivalent. So these functions use stdargs 78 instead. This is unlikely to be a problem unless you're building ncurses on 79 a System V old enough to only have varargs.h. (Solaris 2.5.1 used the 80 stdarg.h binding as well). 81 82+ If you're using a BSD earlier than 4.4BSD, or a Linux old enough not to have 83 a native vsscanf(3) in its library, vwscanw() will not work. You lose. (It 84 should work on any System V, however). If you want to fix this, add an 85 implementation to ncurses/vsscanf.c. 86 87+ The C++ binding fails to build with a few C++ compilers. 88 89+ terminfo.5 does not format with the SunOS (and most other platform's) tbl 90 utility because it relies on a diversion for each table entry. Get the 91 groff package. 92 93Untested features: 94 95+ The code for the HP color model using set_color_pair is untested. 96 97+ The code for handling soft labels on a terminal type with built-in support 98 for them (num_labels > 0, label_height, label_width, label_format, label_off, 99 label_on, plab_norm, lab_f*) has not been tested. The label_format and 100 lab_f* capabilities aren't presently used. 101 102LONGER-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 103 1041. Extended COSE conformance 105 106There is an XPG4 standard released in 1996 which describes a superset 107of the SVr4 API. The library is BASE conformant with this standard. 108We would like to make ncurses fully conformant at the EXTENDED level 109supporting internationalization. 110 1112. DOS port 112 113Only a few of the files in the library depend on the terminfo format. 114It should be possible to further kernelize the package, then rewrite 115a small number of core files to produce a functionally-compatible 116port that would do updates to a memory-mapped screen area. The first 117result of this would be a DOS port. 118 1193. X port 120 121It would be nice if ncurses could recognize when it was running under X and 122maintain its own window. With this feature, all ncurses programs would 123automatically become X programs. The challenge is to handle resize events 124properly. 125 1264. Unused capabilities 127 128The currently unused capabilities fall naturally into several groups: 129 130A. Status-line capabilities: 131 132 Booleans: has_status_line, status_line_esc_ok. 133 Numerics: width_status_line. 134 Strings: dis_status_line, from_status_line, to_status_line. 135 136System V Release 1 curses made no use of these at all. SVr4's use, if 137any, is unknown. From the AT&T termcap file it looks like curses, in general, 138shouldn't use them; terminal variants with status lines have their line count 139decremented by 1, suggesting that curses is supposed to leave the status line 140alone. 141 142B. Printer capabilities: 143 144 Boolean: col_addr_glitch, cr_cancels_micro_mode, has_print_wheel, 145 row_addr_glitch, semi_auto_right_margin, cpi_changes_res, 146 lpi_changes_res. 147 Numeric: buffer_capacity, dot_horz_spacing, dot_vert_spacing, 148 max_micro_address, max_micro_jump, micro_col_size, 149 micro_line_size, number_of_pins, output_res_char, 150 output_res_line, output_res_horz_inch, print_rate, 151 wide_char_size, bit_image_entwining, bit_image_type. 152 String: down_half_line, form_feed, up_half_line, set_left_margin, 153 set_right_margin, clear_margins, change_char_pitch 154 ... set_page_length (all the SVr4 printer caps), 155 156Curses doesn't use these. 157 158C. Printer-control capabilities: 159 160 Boolean: prtr_silent. 161 Strings: print_screen, prtr_on, prtr_off, prtr_non. 162 163Curses doesn't use these. 164 165D. Dialer strings: 166 167 Strings: hangup, dial_phone, quick_dial, tone, pulse, flash_hook, 168 fixed_pause, wait_tone. 169 170Curses doesn't use these. 171 172E. Window and virtual-terminal capabilities: 173 174 Numerics: maximum_windows, virtual_terminal. 175 Strings: req_for_input, create_window, goto_window, set_window. 176 177These seem to be fossils from some AT&T experiments on character-based 178window systems that never escaped the lab. The virtual_terminal cap had 179something to do with building terminal emulations into tty line disciplines. 180 181F. Unused VDT capabilities: 182 183 Booleans: erase_overstrike, has_meta_key, insert_null_glitch, 184 move_insert, dest_tabs_magic_smso, transparent_underline, 185 needs_xon_xoff, hard_cursor. 186 Numerics: lines_of_memory, buttons. 187 Strings: pkey_key, pkey_local, pkey_xmit, underline_char, 188 enter_xon_mode, exit_xon_mode, xon_character, xoff_character, 189 display_clock, remove_clock, user[0-5], display_pc_char, 190 enter_scancode_mode, exit_scancode_mode, pc_term_options, 191 scancode_escape, alt_scancode_esc. 192 193These are the potentially important ones for ncurses. Notes: 194 195 i) ncurses doesn't need move_insert; it never uses cup/hpa/vpa while 196 insert_mode is on. 197 198 ii) We probably don't care about dest_tabs_magic_smso; only 199 Telerays used it and they're all long obsolete. 200 201-- vile:txtmode 202