1------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2-- Copyright (c) 1998-2007,2008 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 1.51 2008/10/11 19:22:27 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 75Portability (or lack thereof): 76 77+ Users of older System V UNIXes (but not Solaris, and probably not SVr4) may 78 trip over a known problem with the signal-handling code which causes abrupt 79 termination of ncurses applications following resume from a ^Z suspend (this 80 problem was first seen running lynx). You will not see this problem if you 81 are running Linux or one of the 4.4BSD derivatives like FreeBSD, NetBSD, or 82 BSDI. For details, see the analysis in the header comment of 83 ncurses/tty/lib_tstp.c . 84 85+ In theory, vwprintw and vwscanf are supposed to use the older varargs.h 86 interface for handling variadic argument lists (and are deprecated by X/Open 87 for that reason). Linux doesn't have varargs.h, it has the newer 88 X/Open-standard stdargs.h equivalent. So these functions use stdargs 89 instead. This is unlikely to be a problem unless you're building ncurses on 90 a System V old enough to only have varargs.h. (Solaris 2.5.1 used the 91 stdarg.h binding as well). 92 93+ If you're using a BSD earlier than 4.4BSD, or a Linux old enough not to have 94 a native vsscanf(3) in its library, vwscanw() will not work. You lose. (It 95 should work on any System V, however). If you want to fix this, add an 96 implementation to ncurses/vsscanf.c. 97 98+ The C++ binding fails to build with a few C++ compilers. 99 100+ terminfo.5 does not format with the SunOS (and most other platform's) tbl 101 utility because it relies on a diversion for each table entry. Get the 102 groff package. 103 104Untested features: 105 106+ The code for the HP color model using set_color_pair is untested. 107 108+ The code for handling soft labels on a terminal type with built-in support 109 for them (num_labels > 0, label_height, label_width, label_format, label_off, 110 label_on, plab_norm, lab_f*) has not been tested. The label_format and 111 lab_f* capabilities aren't presently used. 112 113LONGER-TERM TO-DO ITEMS: 114 1151. Extended COSE conformance 116 117There is an XPG4 standard released in 1996 which describes a superset 118of the SVr4 API. The library is BASE conformant with this standard. 119We would like to make ncurses fully conformant at the EXTENDED level 120supporting internationalization. 121 1222. DOS port 123 124Only a few of the files in the library depend on the terminfo format. 125It should be possible to further kernelize the package, then rewrite 126a small number of core files to produce a functionally-compatible 127port that would do updates to a memory-mapped screen area. The first 128result of this would be a DOS port. 129 1303. X port 131 132It would be nice if ncurses could recognize when it was running under X and 133maintain its own window. With this feature, all ncurses programs would 134automatically become X programs. The challenge is to handle resize events 135properly. 136 1374. Unused capabilities 138 139The currently unused capabilities fall naturally into several groups: 140 141A. Status-line capabilities: 142 143 Booleans: has_status_line, status_line_esc_ok. 144 Numerics: width_status_line. 145 Strings: dis_status_line, from_status_line, to_status_line. 146 147System V Release 1 curses made no use of these at all. SVr4's use, if 148any, is unknown. From the AT&T termcap file it looks like curses, in general, 149shouldn't use them; terminal variants with status lines have their line count 150decremented by 1, suggesting that curses is supposed to leave the status line 151alone. 152 153B. Printer capabilities: 154 155 Boolean: col_addr_glitch, cr_cancels_micro_mode, has_print_wheel, 156 row_addr_glitch, semi_auto_right_margin, cpi_changes_res, 157 lpi_changes_res. 158 Numeric: buffer_capacity, dot_horz_spacing, dot_vert_spacing, 159 max_micro_address, max_micro_jump, micro_col_size, 160 micro_line_size, number_of_pins, output_res_char, 161 output_res_line, output_res_horz_inch, print_rate, 162 wide_char_size, bit_image_entwining, bit_image_type. 163 String: down_half_line, form_feed, up_half_line, set_left_margin, 164 set_right_margin, clear_margins, change_char_pitch 165 ... set_page_length (all the SVr4 printer caps), 166 167Curses doesn't use these. 168 169C. Printer-control capabilities: 170 171 Boolean: prtr_silent. 172 Strings: print_screen, prtr_on, prtr_off, prtr_non. 173 174Curses doesn't use these. 175 176D. Dialer strings: 177 178 Strings: hangup, dial_phone, quick_dial, tone, pulse, flash_hook, 179 fixed_pause, wait_tone. 180 181Curses doesn't use these. 182 183E. Window and virtual-terminal capabilities: 184 185 Numerics: maximum_windows, virtual_terminal. 186 Strings: req_for_input, create_window, goto_window, set_window. 187 188These seem to be fossils from some AT&T experiments on character-based 189window systems that never escaped the lab. The virtual_terminal cap had 190something to do with building terminal emulations into tty line disciplines. 191 192F. Unused VDT capabilities: 193 194 Booleans: erase_overstrike, has_meta_key, insert_null_glitch, 195 move_insert, dest_tabs_magic_smso, transparent_underline, 196 needs_xon_xoff, hard_cursor. 197 Numerics: lines_of_memory, buttons. 198 Strings: pkey_key, pkey_local, pkey_xmit, underline_char, 199 enter_xon_mode, exit_xon_mode, xon_character, xoff_character, 200 display_clock, remove_clock, user[0-5], display_pc_char, 201 enter_scancode_mode, exit_scancode_mode, pc_term_options, 202 scancode_escape, alt_scancode_esc. 203 204These are the potentially important ones for ncurses. Notes: 205 206 i) ncurses doesn't need move_insert; it never uses cup/hpa/vpa while 207 insert_mode is on. 208 209 ii) We probably don't care about dest_tabs_magic_smso; only 210 Telerays used it and they're all long obsolete. 211 212-- vile:txtmode 213