1------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2-- Copyright (c) 1998-2010,2011 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 1.57 2011/03/28 00:23:02 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 64+ the configure --disable-ext-funcs option does not work for Ada95 tree. 65 66+ the --with-pthread configuration builds for Cygwin, but does not work 67 properly (test/worm.c shows all of the worms in the same location). 68 69+ the --enable-rpath configure option builds for the corresponding platforms; 70 however combining it with --with-ticlib and --with-termlib does not always 71 produce libraries that can be run without setting environment variables. 72 Building those with libtool does not work either. (This is a problem with 73 the BSD platforms). 74 75+ more work is needed to make the MinGW port support ordinary terminals. 76 77Portability (or lack thereof): 78 79+ Users of older System V UNIXes (but not Solaris, and probably not SVr4) may 80 trip over a known problem with the signal-handling code which causes abrupt 81 termination of ncurses applications following resume from a ^Z suspend (this 82 problem was first seen running lynx). You will not see this problem if you 83 are using one of the 4.4BSD derivatives like such as, NetBSD, or BSDI, or 84 systems using that convention. For details, see the analysis in the header 85 comment of ncurses/tty/lib_tstp.c . 86 87+ In theory, vwprintw and vwscanf are supposed to use the older varargs.h 88 interface for handling variadic argument lists (and are deprecated by X/Open 89 for that reason). Many newer systems do no have varargs.h, instead they have 90 only the newer X/Open-standard stdargs.h equivalent. So these functions use 91 stdargs instead. This is unlikely to be a problem unless you're building 92 ncurses on a System V old enough to only have varargs.h. (Solaris 2.5.1 used 93 the stdarg.h binding as well). 94 95+ If you're using a system old enough not to have a native vsscanf(3) in its 96 library, vwscanw() will not work. If you want to fix this, add an 97 implementation to ncurses/vsscanf.c. 98 99+ The C++ binding fails to build with a few C++ compilers. 100 101+ terminfo.5 does not format with the SunOS (and most other platform's) tbl 102 utility because it relies on a diversion for each table entry. Get the 103 groff package. 104 105Untested features: 106 107+ The code for the HP color model using set_color_pair is untested. 108 109+ The code for handling soft labels on a terminal type with built-in support 110 for them (num_labels > 0, label_height, label_width, label_format, label_off, 111 label_on, plab_norm, lab_f*) has not been tested. The label_format and 112 lab_f* capabilities aren't presently used. 113 114LONGER-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 115 1161. Extended COSE conformance 117 118There is an XPG4 standard released in 1996 which describes a superset 119of the SVr4 API. The library is BASE conformant with this standard. 120We would like to make ncurses fully conformant at the EXTENDED level 121supporting internationalization. 122 1232. DOS port 124 125Only a few of the files in the library depend on the terminfo format. 126It should be possible to further kernelize the package, then rewrite 127a small number of core files to produce a functionally-compatible 128port that would do updates to a memory-mapped screen area. The first 129result of this would be a DOS port. 130 1313. X port 132 133It would be nice if ncurses could recognize when it was running under X and 134maintain its own window. With this feature, all ncurses programs would 135automatically become X programs. The challenge is to handle resize events 136properly. 137 1384. Unused capabilities 139 140The currently unused capabilities fall naturally into several groups: 141 142A. Status-line capabilities: 143 144 Booleans: has_status_line, status_line_esc_ok. 145 Numerics: width_status_line. 146 Strings: dis_status_line, from_status_line, to_status_line. 147 148System V Release 1 curses made no use of these at all. SVr4's use, if 149any, is unknown. From the AT&T termcap file it looks like curses, in general, 150shouldn't use them; terminal variants with status lines have their line count 151decremented by 1, suggesting that curses is supposed to leave the status line 152alone. 153 154B. Printer capabilities: 155 156 Boolean: col_addr_glitch, cr_cancels_micro_mode, has_print_wheel, 157 row_addr_glitch, semi_auto_right_margin, cpi_changes_res, 158 lpi_changes_res. 159 Numeric: buffer_capacity, dot_horz_spacing, dot_vert_spacing, 160 max_micro_address, max_micro_jump, micro_col_size, 161 micro_line_size, number_of_pins, output_res_char, 162 output_res_line, output_res_horz_inch, print_rate, 163 wide_char_size, bit_image_entwining, bit_image_type. 164 String: down_half_line, form_feed, up_half_line, set_left_margin, 165 set_right_margin, clear_margins, change_char_pitch 166 ... set_page_length (all the SVr4 printer caps), 167 168Curses doesn't use these. 169 170C. Printer-control capabilities: 171 172 Boolean: prtr_silent. 173 Strings: print_screen, prtr_on, prtr_off, prtr_non. 174 175Curses doesn't use these. 176 177D. Dialer strings: 178 179 Strings: hangup, dial_phone, quick_dial, tone, pulse, flash_hook, 180 fixed_pause, wait_tone. 181 182Curses doesn't use these. 183 184E. Window and virtual-terminal capabilities: 185 186 Numerics: maximum_windows, virtual_terminal. 187 Strings: req_for_input, create_window, goto_window, set_window. 188 189These seem to be fossils from some AT&T experiments on character-based 190window systems that never escaped the lab. The virtual_terminal cap had 191something to do with building terminal emulations into tty line disciplines. 192 193F. Unused VDT capabilities: 194 195 Booleans: erase_overstrike, has_meta_key, insert_null_glitch, 196 move_insert, dest_tabs_magic_smso, transparent_underline, 197 needs_xon_xoff, hard_cursor. 198 Numerics: lines_of_memory, buttons. 199 Strings: pkey_key, pkey_local, pkey_xmit, underline_char, 200 enter_xon_mode, exit_xon_mode, xon_character, xoff_character, 201 display_clock, remove_clock, user[0-5], display_pc_char, 202 enter_scancode_mode, exit_scancode_mode, pc_term_options, 203 scancode_escape, alt_scancode_esc. 204 205These are the potentially important ones for ncurses. Notes: 206 207 i) ncurses doesn't need move_insert; it never uses cup/hpa/vpa while 208 insert_mode is on. 209 210 ii) We probably don't care about dest_tabs_magic_smso; only 211 Telerays used it and they're all long obsolete. 212 213-- vile:txtmode 214