NetBSD/gnu/dist/texinfo/TODO

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Id: TODO,v 1.3 2002/10/15 22:22:48 karl Exp
This is the todo list for GNU Texinfo.
If you are interested in working on any of these, email bug-texinfo@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000,
2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation.
Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.
* General:
- Rationalize and improve the dir categories in existing manuals.
See http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/emacs-devel/2002-October/013094.html
(and the containing thread).
- Extend and improve the tests.
- Get Info declared as a MIME Content-Type.
- Support compressed image files.
- Handle reference card creation, perhaps by only paying attention to
sectioning and @def... commands.
- Allow @end (and other?) commands to be indented in the source.
* Language:
- @figure, something like:
@figure [xref-label]
@figureinclude <filename>, [<height>], [<width>]
@figurehsize <dimen>
@figurevsize <dimen>
@caption ... @end caption
<arbitrary Texinfo commands>
@end figure
- @xindexterm [def] primary [,secondary [,tertiary]] or some such?
- multicolumn * width to take up `the rest'.
- another table command to take N succeeding items and split them
into M columns (see eplain).
- support bibliographies with BibTeX (see web2c/doc for kludge prototype).
- @flushboth to combine @flushleft and @flushright, for RFC's.
- @part sectioning command.
- Allow subitems and `see' and `see also' in indices.
- @exercise/@answer command for, e.g., gawk.
- Allow @hsep/@vsep at @item, instead of just in template.
- Support automatic line numbering of examples.
- Better macro syntax.
- Allow : in node names for info files, for names like
`class::method'. Likewise index entries. A quoting mechanism such
as surrounding node names with SPACE BACKSPACE is probably the best
solution, although this is an incompatible change to Info format, sigh.
- Change bars. This is difficult or impossible in TeX,
unfortunately. To do it right requires device driver support.
wdiff or ediff may be all we can do.
* Makeinfo:
- Try directory of main source file.
- Support @`{@dotless{i}} et al. in HTML.
- A detexinfo program, like detex or delatex. This command would
strip all the texinfo commands out, and would be used as a filter on
the way to a speller. An option would be to NOT strip comments out.
makeinfo --no-headers comes close.
- If node name contains an @ command, complain explicitly.
- Call Ghostscript to get ASCII/jpg output for the @image command.
- Better HTML output: allow settable background color, table colors
and spacing, <head> meta tags, back link from footnote marker, etc.
- Rewrite completely to simplify generation of different formats.
* TeX:
- Use @ as the escape character, and Texinfo syntax generally, in the
table of contents, aux, and index files. Eliminate all the crazy
multiple redefinitions of every Texinfo command in different contexts.
- Handle @hsep and @vsep in @multitables.
- Introduce new command to change \bindingoffset.
- Reasonable way to change fonts from the default (some work has been
done), to allow for PostScript fonts, for example.
- How about using latex2html to produce HTML?
- Support 8-bit input characters, perhaps via the ec fonts.
- Repeat table headings if a @multitable is multiple pages long.
- Table of contents gets misaligned if there are 10 or more [sub]sections.
* Doc:
- Include a complete functional summary, as in a reference card, in
the manual.
- Improve the manuals, especially for makeinfo, standalone info, etc.
- new section on doing dedication pages. See gawk.texi
for an example of doing it in both the tex and info versions.
* Info:
- Regular expression search.
- Full-text search across all info files installed on the system.
- Support character sets other than ISO Latin 1.
- Perhaps comply with LANGUAGE setting on a per-node basis, to allow
incremental translation of Texinfo files.
- Search all nodes of dir file at startup, then can have
INFO-DIR-SEPARATE-GROUPS and other such.
- Better dir file merging.
- Steal interface ideas from Lynx: number links, use color, etc.
Perhaps code from the pinfo viewer can be reused:
http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/.
- More sample .infokey files, so people can choose without writing their own.
- q within help should quit help like C-x 0.
- Incorporate an X-based viewer, perhaps tkinfo
http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~boldt/tkinfo/
or saxinfo.
* PDF:
- make each letter of the index (A, B, ...) a section in the TOC.
From Carsten Dominik <dominik@astro.uva.nl>.
* install-info:
- be able to copy the info file to compile-time $(infodir), to
simplify by-hand installation.
Ideas that will not be implemented:
- Process Texinfo files directly instead of converting to Info:
ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/people/phelps/tcltk/tkman.tar.Z, which
uses Tcl/Tk 8.0 from ftp.smli.com in the /pub/tcl directory.
From: phelps@ecstasy.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Phelps)
[This has the disadvantage of needing to be updated when the
Texinfo language changes, so don't.]
- Split HTML output by chapter.
[Then cross-references in HTML cannot be generated consistently.]