1------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2-- Copyright (c) 1998-2005,2006 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 1.48 2006/10/28 19:49:16 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+ The resizeterm() function does not handle ripped-off lines such as that done 62 for the slk_XXX functions. 63 64+ vid_attr() should support the set_a_attributes (sgr1) string, but does not. 65 There appear to be no terminals that require that functionality. 66 67Portability (or lack thereof): 68 69+ Users of older System V UNIXes (but not Solaris, and probably not SVr4) may 70 trip over a known problem with the signal-handling code which causes abrupt 71 termination of ncurses applications following resume from a ^Z suspend (this 72 problem was first seen running lynx). You will not see this problem if you 73 are running Linux or one of the 4.4BSD derivatives like FreeBSD, NetBSD, or 74 BSDI. For details, see the analysis in the header comment of 75 ncurses/tty/lib_tstp.c . 76 77+ In theory, vwprintw and vwscanf are supposed to use the older varargs.h 78 interface for handling variadic argument lists. Linux doesn't have 79 varargs.h, it has the newer X/Open-standard stdargs.h equivalent. So these 80 functions use stdargs instead. This is unlikely to be a problem unless 81 you're building ncurses on a System V old enough to only have varargs.h. 82 (Solaris 2.5.1 uses the stdarg.h binding as well). 83 84+ If you're using a BSD earlier than 4.4BSD, or a Linux old enough not to have 85 a native vsscanf(3) in its library, vwscanw() will not work. You lose. (It 86 should work on any System V, however). If you want to fix this, add an 87 implementation to ncurses/vsscanf.c. 88 89+ The C++ binding fails to build with a few C++ compilers, mainly with 90 configure script problems with vsscanf(). 91 92+ terminfo.5 does not format with the SunOS (and most other platform's) tbl 93 utility because it relies on a diversion for each table entry. Get the 94 groff package. 95 96Untested features: 97 98+ The code for the HP color model using set_color_pair is untested. 99 100+ The code for handling soft labels on a terminal type with built-in support 101 for them (num_labels > 0, label_height, label_width, label_format, label_off, 102 label_on, plab_norm, lab_f*) has not been tested. The label_format and 103 lab_f* capabilities aren't presently used. 104 105LONGER-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 106 1071. Extended COSE conformance 108 109There is an XPG4 standard recently released which describes a superset 110of the SVr4 API. The library is BASE conformant with this standard. 111We would like to make ncurses fully conformant at the EXTENDED level 112supporting internationalization. 113 1142. DOS port 115 116Only a few of the files in the library depend on the terminfo format. 117It should be possible to further kernelize the package, then rewrite 118a small number of core files to produce a functionally-compatible 119port that would do updates to a memory-mapped screen area. The first 120result of this would be a DOS port. 121 1223. X port 123 124It would be nice if ncurses could recognize when it was running under X and 125maintain its own window. With this feature, all ncurses programs would 126automatically become X programs. The challenge is to handle resize events 127properly. 128 1294. Unused capabilities 130 131The currently unused capabilities fall naturally into several groups: 132 133A. Status-line capabilities: 134 135 Booleans: has_status_line, status_line_esc_ok. 136 Numerics: width_status_line. 137 Strings: dis_status_line, from_status_line, to_status_line. 138 139System V Release 1 curses made no use of these at all. SVr4's use, if 140any, is unknown. From the AT&T termcap file it looks like curses, in general, 141shouldn't use them; terminal variants with status lines have their line count 142decremented by 1, suggesting that curses is supposed to leave the status line 143alone. 144 145B. Printer capabilities: 146 147 Boolean: col_addr_glitch, cr_cancels_micro_mode, has_print_wheel, 148 row_addr_glitch, semi_auto_right_margin, cpi_changes_res, 149 lpi_changes_res. 150 Numeric: buffer_capacity, dot_horz_spacing, dot_vert_spacing, 151 max_micro_address, max_micro_jump, micro_col_size, 152 micro_line_size, number_of_pins, output_res_char, 153 output_res_line, output_res_horz_inch, print_rate, 154 wide_char_size, bit_image_entwining, bit_image_type. 155 String: down_half_line, form_feed, up_half_line, set_left_margin, 156 set_right_margin, clear_margins, change_char_pitch 157 ... set_page_length (all the SVr4 printer caps), 158 159Curses doesn't use these. 160 161C. Printer-control capabilities: 162 163 Boolean: prtr_silent. 164 Strings: print_screen, prtr_on, prtr_off, prtr_non. 165 166Curses doesn't use these. 167 168D. Dialer strings: 169 170 Strings: hangup, dial_phone, quick_dial, tone, pulse, flash_hook, 171 fixed_pause, wait_tone. 172 173Curses doesn't use these. 174 175E. Window and virtual-terminal capabilities: 176 177 Numerics: maximum_windows, virtual_terminal. 178 Strings: req_for_input, create_window, goto_window, set_window. 179 180These seem to be fossils from some AT&T experiments on character-based 181window systems that never escaped the lab. The virtual_terminal cap had 182something to do with building terminal emulations into tty line disciplines. 183 184F. Unused VDT capabilities: 185 186 Booleans: erase_overstrike, has_meta_key, insert_null_glitch, 187 move_insert, dest_tabs_magic_smso, transparent_underline, 188 needs_xon_xoff, hard_cursor. 189 Numerics: lines_of_memory, buttons. 190 Strings: pkey_key, pkey_local, pkey_xmit, underline_char, 191 enter_xon_mode, exit_xon_mode, xon_character, xoff_character, 192 display_clock, remove_clock, user[0-5], display_pc_char, 193 enter_scancode_mode, exit_scancode_mode, pc_term_options, 194 scancode_escape, alt_scancode_esc. 195 196These are the potentially important ones for ncurses. Notes: 197 198 i) ncurses doesn't need move_insert; it never uses cup/hpa/vpa while 199 insert_mode is on. 200 201 ii) We probably don't care about dest_tabs_magic_smso; only 202 Telerays used it and they're all long obsolete. 203 204-- vile:txtmode 205