1 #+TITLE: Development notes/ideas
2 #+TODO: OPEN | CLOSED INVALID
6 ** OPEN Allow multiple elpher buffers [33%]
8 Shouldn't be too hard, just need elpher-current-node to be
9 buffer-local and allow various buffer-switching procedures to
10 do something sensible.
12 Here are the things that need to be implemented before
14 - [X] shift history out of node tree and into separate stack
15 - [ ] make history stack variables buffer-local
16 - [ ] have elpher-with-clean-buffer select appropriate buffer
18 ** OPEN Replace support for user-specified starting pages
19 This used to be available, but was removed during a refactor.
21 ** OPEN Allow for grouping of bookmarks
22 To support this I'd like to add a bookmark page specific
23 set of keybindings. Currently all bindings available on
24 the bookmark page are available everywhere else. But
25 expanding and collapsing bookmark groups sounds like it
26 might need more specific bindings.
28 ** OPEN Implement Gemini support [88%]
30 Here is the checklist of features required before release:
31 - [X] basic genimi transactions
32 - [ ] gemini transactions requiring client certificates
33 - [X] gemini input handling
34 - [X] gemini map files (text/gemini)
35 - [X] Support for plain text responses (text/*)
36 - [X] Support for image responses (text/image)
37 - [X] Support for mime-specified character encodeing
38 - [X] Saving responses to disk
39 - [X] Viewing raw responses
41 The last few will be made infinitely easier if we factor the
42 gopher "getter" code differently.
44 ** OPEN Add history browsing
48 * Completed improvements
50 ** CLOSED Turn on lexical scoping
52 A branch exists for this, but there are some compilation kinks
56 ** CLOSED 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 ** CLOSED Allow users to access selected and current node details.
67 ** CLOSED 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 ** CLOSED Support character encoding diversity
90 ** CLOSED 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.
108 ** INVALID Remove "redraw" command
109 This is only necessary for returning from displaying the raw
110 server response. If I can provide a better way of doing that
111 then we can get rid of redraw entirely.
113 Actually, this command can be useful to correct rendering issues that
114 occasionally pop up in termal windows. Lets leave it for now.
116 ** CLOSED Implement Finger support
118 ** CLOSED Improve download performance
119 This is actually easy to fix - the major problem at the moment is
120 the braindead way the incrementally-retrieved data is recorded:
121 (setq result-string (concat result-string next-bit)).
122 This is O(N^2). Yuck!
124 Okay, replacing this really does improve things. Large gemini
125 downloads now seem occur at rates I'd expect.
127 ** CLOSED Download/rendering progress feedback
128 Particularly for large files or complicated pages, elpher can
129 take a few seconds or more to generate a response. Thhis is
130 frustrating for users, who are left staring at a blinking
133 A small amount of feedback could help with this.
137 ** CLOSED Org mode faces are not present in recent emacs versions
138 Even 26.1 doesn't seem to have these. This means that, for many
139 users, elpher doesn't show any difference between any of the
140 item types. Not a major problem at all, but the faces we inherit
141 from should definitely be ones which have been present for much
142 longer. Perhaps the font lock mode faces are the way to go after
145 Update: changed all default faces to inherit from font-lock and basic faces.
147 ** CLOSED URL-centric addressing breaks bookmark file compatibility
149 Need a way to allow people to rescue their old bookmark files
150 following this update.
152 ** CLOSED History loops <2019-11-08 Fri>
154 Occasionally elpher gets stuck in a "history loop" where a
155 node is its own grandparent. Obviously this sucks, as history
156 is elpher's main mechanism for making gopherspace exploration
159 I suspect the problem is in either ~elpher-visit-node~ or
160 ~elpher-visit-parent~.
162 Follow-up: this has been fixed by the new stack-based history system
166 ** CLOSED Redirects do not rewrite current address
168 This is a bug, as gemini://blah.com/hi may get redirected
169 to gemini://blah.com/hi/, at which point link lines
170 of the form "=> there" should be interpreted as pointing
171 at gemini://blah.com/hi/there, while currently they are
172 interpreted as pointing at gemini://blah.com/there.