--- /dev/null
+ -*-mode: text; coding: latin-1;-*-
+
+Problems, fixmes and other issues in the emacs-unicode branch
+-------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Notes by fx to record various things of variable importance. handa
+needs to check them -- don't take too seriously, especially with
+regard to completeness.
+
+_Do take seriously that you don't want this branch unless you're
+actually working on it; you risk your data by actually using it._ If
+you just want to edit Unicode and/or unify iso-8859 et al, see the
+existing support and the extra stuff at
+<URL:ftp://dlpx1.dl.ac.uk/fx/emacs/Mule>, mostly now in the CVS trunk.
+(Editing support is mostly orthogonal to the internal representation.)
+
+ * SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P returns true for Latin-1 characters, which has
+ undesirable effects. E.g.:
+ (multibyte-string-p (let ((s "x")) (aset s 0 ?£) s)) => nil
+ (multibyte-string-p (concat [?£])) => nil
+ (text-char-description ?£) => "M-#"
+
+ These examples are all fixed by the change of 2002-10-14, but
+ there still exist questionalble SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P in the
+ code.
+
+ * Rationalize character syntax and its relationship to the Unicode
+ database. (Applies mainly to symbol an punctuation syntax.)
+
+ * Fontset handling and customization needs work. We want to relate
+ fonts to scripts, probably based on the Unicode blocks. The
+ presence of small-repertoire 10646-encoded fonts in XFree 4 is a
+ pain, not currently worked round.
+
+ With the change on 2002-07-26, multiple fonts can be
+ specified in a fontset for a specific range of characters.
+ Each range can also be specified by script. Before using
+ ISO10646 fonts, Emacs checks their repertories to avoid such
+ fonts that don't have a glyph for a specific character.
+
+ * Work is also needed on charset and coding system priorities.
+
+ * The relevant bits of latin1-disp.el need porting (and probably
+ re-naming/updating). See also cyril-util.el.
+
+ * Quail files need more work now the encoding is irrelevant.
+
+ * What to do with the old coding categories stuff?
+
+ * The preferred-coding-system property of charsets should probably be
+ junked unless it can be made more useful now.
+
+ * find-multibyte-characters needs looking at.
+
+ * Implement Korean cp949/UHC, BIG5-HKSCS and any other important missing
+ charsets.
+
+ * Check up on definition of alternativnj.
+
+ * Lazy-load tables for unify-charset somehow?
+
+ Actually, Emacs clear out all charset maps and unify-map just
+ before dumping, and their are loaded again on demand the
+ dumped emacs. But, those maps (char tables) generated while
+ temacs is running can't be get rid of from the dumped emacs.
+
+ * Translation tables for {en,de}code currently aren't supported.
+
+ This should be fixed by the changes of 2002-10-14.
+
+ * Defining CCL coding systems currently doesn't work.
+
+ This should be fixed by the changes of 2003-01-30.
+
+ * iso-2022 charsets get unified on i/o.
+
+ With the change on 2003-01-06, decoding routines put `charset'
+ property to decoded text, and iso-2022 encoder pay attention
+ to it. Thus, for instance, reading and writing by
+ iso-2022-7bit preserve the original designation sequences.
+ The property name `preferred-charset' may be better?
+
+ We may have to utilize this property to decide a font.
+
+ * Revisit locale processing: look at treating the language and
+ charset parts separately. (Language should affect things like
+ speling and calendar, but that's not a Unicode issue.)
+
+ * Handle Unicode combining characters usefully, e.g. diacritics, and
+ handle more scripts specifically (à la Devanagari). There are
+ issues with canonicalization.
+
+ * Bidi is a separate issue with no support currently.
+
+ * We need tabular input methods, e.g. for maths symbols. (Not
+ specific to Unicode.)
+
+ * Need multibyte text in menus, e.g. for the above. (Not specific to
+ Unicode.)
+
+ * There's currently no support for Unicode normalization.
+
+ * Populate char-width-table correctly for Unicode chanaracters and
+ worry about what happens when double-width charsets covering
+ non-CJK characters are unified.
+
+ * Emacs 20/21 .elc files are currently not loadable. It may or may
+ not be possible to do this properly.
+
+ With the change on 2002-07-24, elc files generated by Emacs
+ 20.3 and later are correctly loaded (including those
+ containing multibyte characters and compressed). But, elc
+ files generated by 20.2 and the primer are still not loadable.
+ Is it really worth working on it?
+
+ * Rmail won't work with non-ASCII text. Encoding issues for Babyl
+ files need sorting out, but rms says Babyl will go before this is
+ released.
+
+ * Gnus still needs some attention, and we need to get changes
+ accepted by Gnus maintainers...
+
+ * There are type errors lurking, e.g. in
+ Fcheck_coding_systems_region. Define ENABLE_CHECKING to find them.
+
+ * You can grep the code for lots of fixmes.
+
+ * Old auto-save files, and similar files, such as Gnus drafts,
+ containing non-ASCII characters probably won't be re-read correctly.