1------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2-- Copyright 2020 Thomas E. Dickey -- 3-- Copyright 1998-2010,2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc. -- 4-- -- 5-- Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a -- 6-- copy of this software and associated documentation files (the -- 7-- "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including -- 8-- without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, -- 9-- distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell copies -- 10-- of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished -- 11-- to do so, subject to the following conditions: -- 12-- -- 13-- The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included -- 14-- in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. -- 15-- -- 16-- THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS -- 17-- OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF -- 18-- MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN -- 19-- NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, -- 20-- DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR -- 21-- OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE -- 22-- USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. -- 23-- -- 24-- Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright -- 25-- holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the -- 26-- sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written -- 27-- authorization. -- 28------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29-- $Id: TO-DO,v 1.58 2020/02/02 23:34:34 tom Exp $ 30------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 32SHORT-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 33 34Known Problems: 35 36+ libtool does not work with GNAT. 37 38+ The screen optimization has been tested only in an ad hoc manner. We should 39 develop a good set of regression tests to cover lib_doupdate.c and 40 lib_mvcur.c. 41 42+ Magic cookie support (for nonzero xmc values) does not work, since the logic 43 does not take into account refresh. Also, the initial optimize does not 44 adjust the current location when a cookie is emitted. 45 46+ Scrolling optimization has holes: for example, it forces repaints of the 47 screen between calls to refresh(). 48 49+ SVr4 uses slightly different rules for determining when softkeys are shown. 50 For example, they are initially displayed (before the ncurses 'e' test 51 activates them), and a touchwin can apparently also force them to be 52 displayed. 53 54+ The code departs from perfect 8-bit cleanness in one respect; you cannot 55 specify a character \200 as part of a capability string, because the 56 terminfo library interprets \200 as a request to embed NUL (\000) at that 57 point. This is a legacy terminfo property we can't mess with. 58 59+ The window classes defined in the c++ subdirectory need documentation. Some 60 C++ programmer could earn a lot of good karma by doing this... 61 62+ vid_attr() should support the set_a_attributes (sgr1) string, but does not. 63 There appear to be no terminals that require that functionality. 64 65+ the configure --disable-ext-funcs option does not work for Ada95 tree. 66 67+ the --with-pthread configuration builds for Cygwin, but does not work 68 properly (test/worm.c shows all of the worms in the same location). 69 70+ the --enable-rpath configure option builds for the corresponding platforms; 71 however combining it with --with-ticlib and --with-termlib does not always 72 produce libraries that can be run without setting environment variables. 73 Building those with libtool does not work either. (This is a problem with 74 the BSD platforms). 75 76+ more work is needed to make the MinGW port support ordinary terminals. 77 78Portability (or lack thereof): 79 80+ Users of older System V UNIXes (but not Solaris, and probably not SVr4) may 81 trip over a known problem with the signal-handling code which causes abrupt 82 termination of ncurses applications following resume from a ^Z suspend (this 83 problem was first seen running lynx). You will not see this problem if you 84 are using one of the 4.4BSD derivatives like such as, NetBSD, or BSDI, or 85 systems using that convention. For details, see the analysis in the header 86 comment of ncurses/tty/lib_tstp.c . 87 88+ In theory, vwprintw and vwscanf are supposed to use the older varargs.h 89 interface for handling variadic argument lists (and are deprecated by X/Open 90 for that reason). Many newer systems do no have varargs.h, instead they have 91 only the newer X/Open-standard stdargs.h equivalent. So these functions use 92 stdargs instead. This is unlikely to be a problem unless you're building 93 ncurses on a System V old enough to only have varargs.h. (Solaris 2.5.1 used 94 the stdarg.h binding as well). 95 96+ If you're using a system old enough not to have a native vsscanf(3) in its 97 library, vwscanw() will not work. If you want to fix this, add an 98 implementation to ncurses/vsscanf.c. 99 100+ The C++ binding fails to build with a few C++ compilers. 101 102+ terminfo.5 does not format with the SunOS (and most other platform's) tbl 103 utility because it relies on a diversion for each table entry. Get the 104 groff package. 105 106Untested features: 107 108+ The code for the HP color model using set_color_pair is untested. 109 110+ The code for handling soft labels on a terminal type with built-in support 111 for them (num_labels > 0, label_height, label_width, label_format, label_off, 112 label_on, plab_norm, lab_f*) has not been tested. The label_format and 113 lab_f* capabilities aren't presently used. 114 115LONGER-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 116 1171. Extended COSE conformance 118 119There is an XPG4 standard released in 1996 which describes a superset 120of the SVr4 API. The library is BASE conformant with this standard. 121We would like to make ncurses fully conformant at the EXTENDED level 122supporting internationalization. 123 1242. DOS port 125 126Only a few of the files in the library depend on the terminfo format. 127It should be possible to further kernelize the package, then rewrite 128a small number of core files to produce a functionally-compatible 129port that would do updates to a memory-mapped screen area. The first 130result of this would be a DOS port. 131 1323. X port 133 134It would be nice if ncurses could recognize when it was running under X and 135maintain its own window. With this feature, all ncurses programs would 136automatically become X programs. The challenge is to handle resize events 137properly. 138 1394. Unused capabilities 140 141The currently unused capabilities fall naturally into several groups: 142 143A. Status-line capabilities: 144 145 Booleans: has_status_line, status_line_esc_ok. 146 Numerics: width_status_line. 147 Strings: dis_status_line, from_status_line, to_status_line. 148 149System V Release 1 curses made no use of these at all. SVr4's use, if 150any, is unknown. From the AT&T termcap file it looks like curses, in general, 151shouldn't use them; terminal variants with status lines have their line count 152decremented by 1, suggesting that curses is supposed to leave the status line 153alone. 154 155B. Printer capabilities: 156 157 Boolean: col_addr_glitch, cr_cancels_micro_mode, has_print_wheel, 158 row_addr_glitch, semi_auto_right_margin, cpi_changes_res, 159 lpi_changes_res. 160 Numeric: buffer_capacity, dot_horz_spacing, dot_vert_spacing, 161 max_micro_address, max_micro_jump, micro_col_size, 162 micro_line_size, number_of_pins, output_res_char, 163 output_res_line, output_res_horz_inch, print_rate, 164 wide_char_size, bit_image_entwining, bit_image_type. 165 String: down_half_line, form_feed, up_half_line, set_left_margin, 166 set_right_margin, clear_margins, change_char_pitch 167 ... set_page_length (all the SVr4 printer caps), 168 169Curses doesn't use these. 170 171C. Printer-control capabilities: 172 173 Boolean: prtr_silent. 174 Strings: print_screen, prtr_on, prtr_off, prtr_non. 175 176Curses doesn't use these. 177 178D. Dialer strings: 179 180 Strings: hangup, dial_phone, quick_dial, tone, pulse, flash_hook, 181 fixed_pause, wait_tone. 182 183Curses doesn't use these. 184 185E. Window and virtual-terminal capabilities: 186 187 Numerics: maximum_windows, virtual_terminal. 188 Strings: req_for_input, create_window, goto_window, set_window. 189 190These seem to be fossils from some AT&T experiments on character-based 191window systems that never escaped the lab. The virtual_terminal cap had 192something to do with building terminal emulations into tty line disciplines. 193 194F. Unused VDT capabilities: 195 196 Booleans: erase_overstrike, has_meta_key, insert_null_glitch, 197 move_insert, dest_tabs_magic_smso, transparent_underline, 198 needs_xon_xoff, hard_cursor. 199 Numerics: lines_of_memory, buttons. 200 Strings: pkey_key, pkey_local, pkey_xmit, underline_char, 201 enter_xon_mode, exit_xon_mode, xon_character, xoff_character, 202 display_clock, remove_clock, user[0-5], display_pc_char, 203 enter_scancode_mode, exit_scancode_mode, pc_term_options, 204 scancode_escape, alt_scancode_esc. 205 206These are the potentially important ones for ncurses. Notes: 207 208 i) ncurses doesn't need move_insert; it never uses cup/hpa/vpa while 209 insert_mode is on. 210 211 ii) We probably don't care about dest_tabs_magic_smso; only 212 Telerays used it and they're all long obsolete. 213 214-- vile:txtmode 215