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 Remove "redraw" command
19 This is only necessary for returning from displaying the raw
20 server response. If I can provide a better way of doing that
21 then we can get rid of redraw entirely.
23 ** OPEN Replace support for user-specified starting pages
24 This used to be available, but was removed during a refactor.
26 ** OPEN Allow for grouping of bookmarks
27 To support this I'd like to add a bookmark page specific
28 set of keybindings. Currently all bindings available on
29 the bookmark page are available everywhere else. But
30 expanding and collapsing bookmark groups sounds like it
31 might need more specific bindings.
33 ** OPEN Implement Gemini support [88%]
35 Here is the checklist of features required before release:
36 - [X] basic genimi transactions
37 - [ ] gemini transactions requiring client certificates
38 - [X] gemini input handling
39 - [X] gemini map files (text/gemini)
40 - [X] Support for plain text responses (text/*)
41 - [X] Support for image responses (text/image)
42 - [X] Support for mime-specified character encodeing
43 - [X] Saving responses to disk
44 - [X] Viewing raw responses
46 The last few will be made infinitely easier if we factor the
47 gopher "getter" code differently.
51 ** OPEN History loops <2019-11-08 Fri>
53 Occasionally elpher gets stuck in a "history loop" where a
54 node is its own grandparent. Obviously this sucks, as history
55 is elpher's main mechanism for making gopherspace exploration
58 I suspect the problem is in either ~elpher-visit-node~ or
59 ~elpher-visit-parent~.
61 * Completed improvements
63 ** CLOSED Turn on lexical scoping
65 A branch exists for this, but there are some compilation kinks
69 ** CLOSED Implement support for telnet entries
71 Similar to http entries, telnet entries will be handled by code
72 external to elpher. However it seems I made http entry handling a
73 special case, and I don't want another! So the only option is to
74 bring both http and telnet entries back into the fold by representing
75 them both as standard nodes and having the grunt work done by getter
78 ** CLOSED Allow users to access selected and current node details.
80 ** CLOSED Implement bookmark system
82 Currently the bookmark page replaces the current page, and it
83 does so silently (i.e. it doesn't become part of the link hierarchy).
84 I think this is a mistake, as it results in confusing behaviour when
85 traversing the link hierarchy after visiting one of the bookmarked links.
87 Instead, I think I should
88 1. Make the bookmark page part of the hierarchy, and
89 2. Reinstate the visited node hash table to avoid excess link hierarchy pollution.
91 In order to accomplish 1. it will be necessary to make the bookmark page renderer
92 a proper getter function, and one that never caches the contents of the buffer.
94 Actually, I might have to think about that a bit more. I don't know
95 how to answer the question of what the best thing to do with node
96 parent links when using a cached node in place of a new node. (Maybe
97 I always update node.parent unless parent is already an ancestor of
101 ** CLOSED Support character encoding diversity
103 ** CLOSED Make URLs the basic address type.
104 Currently I waste a lot of effort converting between
105 URL and non-URL representations. This is unnecessary, and
106 actually makes lots of things uglier.
108 For example, the bookmarks file contains addresses in Elpher's
109 internal representation, whereas I expect users would prefer
112 So the idea would be for (elpher-node-address node) to be
113 a either a string or a symbol, with symbols used for "special"
114 pages (bookmarks, start page, etc). The getter functions
115 `elpher-address-selector' etc will still do what they currently
116 do, but will process the URL to do it.
118 This also means that non-gopher URLs will be explicitly represented
119 as such: no more abusing the "h" type for these.
123 ** CLOSED Org mode faces are not present in recent emacs versions
124 Even 26.1 doesn't seem to have these. This means that, for many
125 users, elpher doesn't show any difference between any of the
126 item types. Not a major problem at all, but the faces we inherit
127 from should definitely be ones which have been present for much
128 longer. Perhaps the font lock mode faces are the way to go after
131 Update: changed all default faces to inherit from font-lock and basic faces.
133 ** CLOSED URL-centric addressing breaks bookmark file compatibility
135 Need a way to allow people to rescue their old bookmark files
136 following this update.