TODO

This is the todo list for GNU Texinfo.
If you are interested in working on any of these, email bug-texinfo@gnu.org.

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  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
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* Language:
  - generalize @deffn/etc. with variants that don't make index entries.
    - could use "@deffn @index{IX} ..." to use index IX instead of default
  - tagging system for definitions - (Robert Dodier for Maxima,
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-texinfo/2021-12/msg00012.html)
  - generalize @vtable/@ftable to any defined index.
    - maybe "@ftable @asis @index{IX}"
  - user-defined macros cannot be used as argument to @table or @itemize.
    Add specific macro commands, @highlightingmacro and @glyphmacro? Or
    accept one arg macro on @table line and no arg macro on @itemize line?
  - @mergeindex to do @syn*index without changing fonts.
  - multicolumn * width to take up `the rest'.
  - Allow @hsep/@vsep at @item, instead of just in template.
  - 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).
  - Support automatic line numbering of examples.
  - Glossary/general definition support (dumas msg 28 Nov 2003 17:09:57 +0100).
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2003-11/msg00092.html
    An issue with the proposal is that glossary definitions could be quite
    long and not suitable for an optional argument.
  - Improve recommendations for @dircategory.  We used to recommend the
    Free Software Directory categories but these have changed.
  - use a different command than @titlepage for the page after the title:
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2019-03/msg00029.html
  - related to the previous entry, add more metadata, in particular for books
    but not only
     * add metadata on last modification date (needed in EPUB)
     * make it easier to gather author metadata
     * short information on licence
  - unique identifiers/way to disambiguate manuals with the same name?
  - reflection on guide/topic document structure and pluggable content
    for extensible documents (Mallard format ideas)

* texi2any:
  - give a warning for "makeinfo FOO.info" when "makeinfo FOO.texi" was meant
  - HTML: support thumbnails.
  - HTML: have a library of different CSS styles.
    http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2004-01/msg00025.html
  - Support output formats retaining the tree structure of Texinfo documents
    as parsed by the Parser.  A lisp-like format for GUILE? Maybe JSON?
  - Support other graphical documentation browsers like GNOME DevHelp
    - DevHelp support could need to wait for a specification of the DevHelp
      XML file format, which was not documented in 2022. From DevHelp help
      in 'Index file format':
      "Unfortunately the *.devhelp2 XML file format is not well documented.
      There is still some hope that it will be fixed in the near future."
      There was an early discussion in 2015. The *.devhelp format at that time
      was the first devhelp file format, now obsolete:
      (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2015-03/msg00041.html)
  - Support the MediaWiki output format.
  - LaTeX: customization and internationalization.

* TeX:
  - should we turn off @set txicodevaristt?
  - Index above @item allows page break.
  - Table of contents is misaligned if there are 10 or more [sub]sections.
  - @float captions should be typeset in a smaller font?
  - Reset the scriptfonts and scriptscriptfonts when font size changes.
  - Reasonable way to change fonts from the default (some work has been
    done), to allow for PostScript fonts, for example.
  - @multitable: handle @hsep and @vsep.
  - @multitable: repeat table headings if multiple pages long.
  - @multitable: support a heading line concept (<thead> in HTML).
  - Introduce new command to change \bindingoffset.
  - Include synctex support.
  - Include hyperlink \special's in the DVI output for xdvi, etc.
  - PDF: make each letter of the index (A, B, ...) a section in the TOC.
    From Carsten Dominik.
  - Use @ as the escape character in index files by default,
    after new texi2dvi is deployed (2022?).

* Doc:
  - Verify/proofread Documentation of the HTML customization.

* Info:
  - If K is describe-key, K M-left changes the node as M-left is
    analysed as multiple keys
  - unnecessary screen redrawing when scroll-last-node=Stop and you
    try to scroll at the bottom of the last node
  - a line continuation backslash sometimes flickers when moving a cursor
  - Perhaps comply with LANGUAGE setting on a per-node basis, to allow
    incremental translation of Texinfo files.
  - Display images when running under X, as Emacs 22+ can.
  - Handle M-n, C-u m, and C-u g like Emacs Info (opening new windows).

* install-info:
  - replace dir file atomically in case install-info is interrupted
    (Pedrum Mohageri,
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2015-11/msg00027.html)
  - install-info --dir-file=dir2 --entry=info foo.info installs garbage
    from the misformatted --entry (and no entries from foo.info).
  - support info dir entries for other than the current info file name;
    see comments in menu_item_equal.

* Distribution:
  - generate txi-??.tex from .po's to make translators' jobs easier.
    From Akim and Karl E.

* Other
  - Info format - Get Emacs to support : in index entries by changing
    the interpretation of index nodes slightly.  See
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2019-01/msg00235.html
    Get Emacs to support node name quoting. See
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2022-08/msg01756.html
  - Process Texinfo files directly instead of converting to other formats.
    It should be possible to turn the C XS parser to a library, probably
    needing a bit more more perl postprocessing rewritten in C and a
    public C API.
    
    There is no plan to use such a library to process Texinfo files directly
    in the Texinfo project, as it will always be easier to convert Texinfo
    to a format with the same information and easier to process such as
    TexinfoXML, or to a format corresponding to the tree structure of Texinfo
    documents as parsed by the Parser.

    If others are interested in processing Texinfo files directly,
    however, it could be possible to work on providing a practical API
    for the C parser in the Texinfo project, and maybe bindings for
    other languages than C or Perl.

***********************************************************************

* Ideas that will not be implemented:

- Support installation of manuals in different languages, along these lines:
  . support a LINGUAS file or variable saying which subdirs LL in the
    source to descend into (under doc/).
  . within each subdir LL, install the info files into $infodir/LL,
    and run install-info on $infodir/LL/dir.
  . info (both emacs and standalone) should read $infodir/$LANG/dir
    as the first dir file, and likewise read info files first from
    $infodir/$LANG, before falling back to $infodir.
  . consider ways to avoid installing images in both places.
    In fact, images probably need to be installed in a subdir
    $infodir/MANUAL/ in the first place, to avoid conflicts of having
    the same image name in different manuals.
  For a test case, see texinfo cvs, with its one translated manual
  (info-fr.texi).
  From Wojciech Polak.
  ... Except, in practice, people just name their manuals with a
  suffix for the language, and that seems to work well enough.  There
  aren't that many manuals even in English, let alone other languages,
  and there are almost no manuals in multiple languages.

- Call Ghostscript to get ASCII/jpg output for the @image command.
  [makeinfo should not try to be make, or assume it knows how the user
   wants to generate images.  Too many different methods are possible.]

- Get Info declared as a MIME Content-Type, and an `info:' URI scheme;
  A library consortium had an URI scheme for a completely different
  purpose than info documentation accepted:
    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4452
  There is mail about this in the bug-texinfo archives:
    http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2003-09/msg00086.html
  However, the registration of those URI and the use of those URI is
  discontinued since 2010:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Info_URI_scheme
  Meanwhile the use of info: in free softwares is still documented in
  man uri.

- 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.  Merely specifying what should be
  changed is not obvious.  texdiff (http://www.robmar.net/TexDiff) does
  something reasonable for LaTeX, maybe it can be adapted.

- @else for the @if... conditionals.  Using (for example) an @iftex block
  followed by an @ifnottex block is good enough.

- A running view mode in Info, to display the next node after the end of the
  last one, and be able to toggle display of a node's subnodes.  
  [Too hard to implement because of how much code assumes 
   that only one node is in a window at once.]