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Todo List (aka Lets get busy)

From: Steve Youngs <steve@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Todo List (aka Lets get busy)
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 13:01:40 +1000
Organization: The SXEmacs Project
User-agent: Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) SXEmacs/22.1.1 (Aston Martin, linux)
Hi Folks!

Here are a list of things that need to be done.  I've split the list
into a couple of sections (to be done by 22.1.1--version-0, to be done
by 22.1.2--version-0, the rest).  I have also tried to prioritise the
lists (more important/urgent items at the top of the list), but if you
want to work on something with a lower priority, I'm totally cool with
that.  Likewise, I'm also totally cool with you working on something
that isn't on the list at all. :-)

I do have one request.  Could you _please_ let me know what you are
working on and, if possible, an estimate of how long it will take to
complete.


To Be Done For 22.1.1--version-0 [ETTC (Estimated Time To Completion): ASAP]
--------------------------------

  o The regex/syntax-table bug.

    This is the bug that I reported at:
    http://www.sxemacs.org/pipermail/sxemacs-devel/2005-January/000307.html 

    And I am fairly sure that it is the same, or at least related to
    Andrey's report at:
    http://www.sxemacs.org/pipermail/sxemacs-devel/2005-January/000279.html
    http://www.sxemacs.org/pipermail/sxemacs-devel/2005-January/000288.html
    http://www.sxemacs.org/pipermail/sxemacs-devel/2005-January/000289.html

    Evgeny, you were looking into this.  Have you made any progress?
    What is the status?  How can we help?

  o Sync up some things recently committed to XEmacs 21.4

        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00088.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00087.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00070.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00069.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00058.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00057.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00056.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00025.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00037.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200412/msg00078.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200411/msg00054.html
        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00006.html

    I'll take care of these.  Adding them should be a fairly trivial
    task but I'll yell if I need a hand.


To Be Done For 22.1.2--version-0 [ETTC: --base-0 plus 1 month]
--------------------------------

  o Autoconf 2.59 compliance.

    Malcolm Purvis has already done all the hard work for us with his
    patch for XEmacs 21.5:

        http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200501/msg00002.html

    So I'm hoping that it will be fairly straight forward to
    SXEmacs-ise it.  The biggest problem will be the differences
    between XEmacs 21.5 configure and XEmacs 21.4 configure (ours is
    based on the 21.4 one and Malcolm's patch is against 21.5).

    Malcolm, I know you're out there lurking from Gmane, would the
    promise of some nice cold XXXX lure you into helping us out with
    this one? :-)

  o Update the Texinfo docs

    This is a big one, and no doubt quite boring too.  But it has to
    be done.  SXEmacs manuals _must_ talk about SXEmacs, not XEmacs.
    A big renaming is needed.  But...

    For you people who are thinking "I'll just write a little Perl
    script and do a global rename"... _WRONG_.  There are going to be
    lots of places where renaming "XEmacs" to "SXEmacs" will _not_ be
    the right thing to do.  A manual renaming is going to be the
    safest way of doing it.

    I did the XE -> SXE renaming of src/* with:

        C-x C-f file RET
        M-% xemacs RET sxemacs RET
        answer `y' or `n' to each prompt
        move back to the top of the buffer
        M-x replace-string RET Sxemacs RET SXEmacs RET
        C-x C-s

    Be especially careful of URL's and email addresses etc.  (A side
    note: is `URI' the plural of `URL' or are they completely
    different things?)

  o configure to barf on win32 platform.

    If someone tries to build SXEmacs on windoze I want our configure
    to tell them "We're sorry but SXEmacs does not support your
    platform", or words to the effect.

  o Begin windoze code eradication.

    We don't do windoze here, so the windoze code has to go.  This
    will be a pretty big task, but most of it is #ifdef'd so shouldn't
    be too bad.

    If this doesn't get finished by release time, that's cool, it can
    continue into the next release.  Oh, if it _does_ get finished by
    this release, well that'll be terrific!

  o Get rid of _ALL_ generated files from the repo.

    This means the auto-autoloads.el and custom-load.el files.  Here's
    the catch... With the current build system, you can't build
    SXEmacs if they don't exist.  You can't generate these files if
    they don't already exist.  You can't even do it if you start with
    empty versions of these files.

    Yeah, I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but that is how it
    is.  There _has_ to be a way to fix that.

    Another generated file to go is src/depend.  It is generated from
    a Perl script in src/ `make-src-depends'.  Lets keep the script,
    but nuke src/depend from the repo and just generate it at build
    time.  `make dep' or something?

    There is also lib-src/config.values but it changes very
    infrequently so it can stay for now.

  o FFI completed.

    Evgeny, you are the man for this one.  Is FFI completed for
    22.1.2--version-0 feasible?  If not, that's cool, but I would like
    this in and finished fairly soon.

  o Johann's "window number patch".

    Johann, are you able to put this together for 22.1.2?

  o Update to latest etags release.


To Be Done For 22.1.3 and beyond [ETTC: when it is done]
--------------------------------

  o Backport the KKCC garbage collector.

    This is the "new" GC in XE 21.5.  Mike Sperber told me that he'd be
    willing to help us with this (answering questions and stuff like
    that). 

  o Bignum, bigfloat, ratio

    Jerry James implemented these in XE 21.5 and I know of at least
    one Berlin-based mathematician that loves them. :-)

  o Think about refactoring the install directory layout.

    We should probably try to follow FHS here.

  o Multi-threading

    This will probably take ages, but it won't get done at all if it
    is never started.  So we start here. :-)

  o Boehm GC (because it is thread-safe, and sexy)

  o XFT/UTF stuff

    Much to my dismay, the world seems to be going UTF or bust.  We'll
    have to as well. :-(  Of course if some miracle happens and the
    whole world starts speaking nothing but iso-8859-1 we can forget
    this one. :-)

  o Default Mule to "on"

    Related to the previous item.  Mule is getting to the point now
    where it is reasonably stable, lets switch it on by default and
    shake out the bugs.

  o New concept of what a "buffer" is.

    Evgeny needs to explain this, but basically a buffer is nothing
    more than a string.  Evgeny wants more. :-)

  o New widget toolkits.

    Should SXEmacs be "skin-able"?

  o Improved package system.

    One that can accommodate multiple transport methods (too many
    people have FTP blocked), 3rd party packages (those that are not
    distributed by XEmacs.org and live in site-packages).

  o Handle images with transparency.

    Sebastian and I were talking about this the other day, I was
    actually a little surprised to discover that XE doesn't do this
    already.

    Before you take this one a step further and say "lets make SXEmacs
    itself transparent", well, I don't want to go there.  And the
    reason is simple, we don't have to because we already have it.
    You just need to be running the latest release of X.org.

  o "Embeddable" buffers.

    |-----------------------------------|
    |            Buffer A               |
    |                                   |
    |        |-----------------|        |
    |Buffer A|    Buffer B     |Buffer A|
    |        |                 |        |
    |        |-----------------|        |
    |            Buffer A               |
    |-----------------------------------|

    ...in a single frame.

  o Display _anything_ in a buffer.

    Including full motion resizable video.

To Be Done Not Related Directly To The Code Base
------------------------------------------------

  o Issue Tracker. [ETTC: ASAP]

    Nick and I are working on this and should be ready RSN[tm].

  o Website. [ETTC: 1 - 3 months]

        - A "links" section giving links to _everything_ that SXEmacs
          can depend on.

        - Template-ise it so we can easily maintain a consistent look
          and feel.

        - An "About Developers" section where we can all have a page
          about ourselves.  You can put up whatever you like within
          reason.  Nothing vulgar, pornographic, offensive, or
          slanderous.  Just use your common sense.

        - A global TODO list online.  There should be a very brief
          description of each item, estimated date of start, estimated
          date of completion, a priority level of some sort, links to
          any resources appropriate, and the name of the developer
          taking responsibility for this item (with a mailto link).

        - Per-developer TODO lists similar to above.

        - All the SXEmacs manuals available online in HTML format.

        - A wiki?  They seem very popular these days.  Do we want one?
          Would a wiki even be appropriate for SXEmacs?

Have fun!

-- 
|---<Steve Youngs>---------------<GnuPG KeyID: A94B3003>---|
|                        In space,                         |
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