1 #+TITLE: Development notes/ideas
5 ** TODO Allow multiple elpher buffers
7 Shouldn't be too hard, just need elpher-current-node to be
8 buffer-local and allow various buffer-switching procedures to
11 ** TODO Turn on lexical scoping
13 A branch exists for this, but there are some compilation kinks
16 ** TODO Remove "redraw" command
17 This is only necessary for returning from displaying the raw
18 server response. If I can provide a better way of doing that
19 then we can get rid of redraw entirely.
21 ** TODO Replace support for user-specified starting pages
22 This used to be available, but was removed during a refactor.
24 ** TODO Allow for grouping of bookmarks
25 To support this I'd like to add a bookmark page specific
26 set of keybindings. Currently all bindings available on
27 the bookmark page are available everywhere else. But
28 expanding and collapsing bookmark groups sounds like it
29 might need more specific bindings.
31 ** IN-PROGRESS Implement Gemini support [66%]
33 Here is the checklist of features required before release:
34 - [X] basic genimi transactions
35 - [ ] gemini transactions requiring client certificates
36 - [X] gemini input handling
37 - [X] gemini map files (text/gemini)
38 - [X] Support for plain text responses (text/*)
39 - [X] Support for image responses (text/image)
40 - [X] Support for mime-specified character encodeing
41 - [ ] Saving responses to disk
42 - [ ] Viewing raw responses
44 The last few will be made infinitely easier if we factor the
45 gopher "getter" code differently.
49 ** URL-centric addressing breaks bookmark file compatibility
51 Need a way to allow people to rescue their old bookmark files
52 following this update.
54 * Completed improvements
56 ** DONE Implement support for telnet entries
58 Similar to http entries, telnet entries will be handled by code
59 external to elpher. However it seems I made http entry handling a
60 special case, and I don't want another! So the only option is to
61 bring both http and telnet entries back into the fold by representing
62 them both as standard nodes and having the grunt work done by getter
65 ** DONE Allow users to access selected and current node details.
67 ** DONE Implement bookmark system
69 Currently the bookmark page replaces the current page, and it
70 does so silently (i.e. it doesn't become part of the link hierarchy).
71 I think this is a mistake, as it results in confusing behaviour when
72 traversing the link hierarchy after visiting one of the bookmarked links.
74 Instead, I think I should
75 1. Make the bookmark page part of the hierarchy, and
76 2. Reinstate the visited node hash table to avoid excess link hierarchy pollution.
78 In order to accomplish 1. it will be necessary to make the bookmark page renderer
79 a proper getter function, and one that never caches the contents of the buffer.
81 Actually, I might have to think about that a bit more. I don't know
82 how to answer the question of what the best thing to do with node
83 parent links when using a cached node in place of a new node. (Maybe
84 I always update node.parent unless parent is already an ancestor of
88 ** DONE Support character encoding diversity
90 ** DONE Make URLs the basic address type.
91 Currently I waste a lot of effort converting between
92 URL and non-URL representations. This is unnecessary, and
93 actually makes lots of things uglier.
95 For example, the bookmarks file contains addresses in Elpher's
96 internal representation, whereas I expect users would prefer
99 So the idea would be for (elpher-node-address node) to be
100 a either a string or a symbol, with symbols used for "special"
101 pages (bookmarks, start page, etc). The getter functions
102 `elpher-address-selector' etc will still do what they currently
103 do, but will process the URL to do it.
105 This also means that non-gopher URLs will be explicitly represented
106 as such: no more abusing the "h" type for these.
110 ** DONE Org mode faces are not present in recent emacs versions
111 Even 26.1 doesn't seem to have these. This means that, for many
112 users, elpher doesn't show any difference between any of the
113 item types. Not a major problem at all, but the faces we inherit
114 from should definitely be ones which have been present for much
115 longer. Perhaps the font lock mode faces are the way to go after
118 Update: changed all default faces to inherit from font-lock and basic faces.