This is old mc team TODO, it will be updated slightly later after pre1/pre2.

Before 4.6.2

mc manual: describe new Find File feature options (find Recursively, case Sensitive and Regular expression) mc manual: Add Environment Variables section

Check all instances of const_cast and str_unconst, remove the unnecessary and comment the rest.

Clean up #include's in all files.

Make mc work with 64 bit data types. This includes support for 64 bit processors, 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit file sizes. Generalizing this, mc should use datatypes as they are appropriate.

Remove all instances of type casts on function pointers. Run the following command to get a list of function pointer types.

    grep -r 'typedef.*(\*' . \
    | sed -n 's/.*(\*\([[:alnum:]_]*\)).*/(\1)/p' \
    | sort -u \
    > fn-types.txt

Then use fgrep to find illegal uses of these types.

    fgrep -r "`cat fn-types.txt`" .

Fix these uses by writing small wrapper functions.

When saving a file is not possible, mcedit should ask the user what to do:

• su(1) to another user and try again
• sudo
• change permissions of the file or the containg directory
• other smart things

Due to problems in the VFS, files are not written back after being edited over VFS with an external editor.

Allow pathnames starting with spaces in vfs/extfs.

Hide the passwords when displaying mcvfs path names.

Broken pipe warning when viewing large *.tar.gz files. Warnings should be shown before the viewer is started if possible.

Cannot spell check unsaved files in the editor.

Dynamic loading for libgpm, libext2fs.

Check if the archive was changed for extfs, tar and cpio. Free the data associated with the old archive.

Use Del to remove items from history.

Ctrl-q Ctrl-m in input dialog should enter \r, not a newline.

Interpret C literals in regular expressions entered by the user, e.g. \r and \0x0D.

Allow entering archives in VFS by Ctrl-PgDown? with non-empty command line. Right now, there is no convenient way to enter an archive when the command line is not empty.

Allow switching between histories of two panels. It's convenient to change to a directory from the history of the other panel.

Allow calling the directory hotlist from Copy, Move and Find File dialogs. Recent directories are the obvious candidates for copying and looking for files.

Allow modifiers for keys in mc.lib, like "shift-up". Right now, modifiers can be read from the terminal (if supported), but not from the config file. This change would make it possible to use modifiers even if they can only be identified by the escape sequences.

When saving config files, write to a copy, then replace the file. This would avoid the problem of partly written config files. Consider using locking of the config files.

Totals are not calculated when copying or moving a single directory. Totals should only be omitted for single files.

Recheck all mouse handlers, make sure that they check button number. We don't want mouse scrolling to be interpreted as mouse click.

Smooth mouse scrolling on panels. Scrolling one page per step is too fast.

Don't read prompt from the subshell, because it's unreliable. Interpret environment variable MC_PS1 (or PS1) in the same way as bash.

Support an environment variable (also like PS1 in bash) for setting the window title.

real_input_dialog_help() shouldn't use translated strings in the section names in .mc/history. Right now, mc writes separate history sections for different locales. Only input history is affected.

Add "Ignore" and "Ignore all" buttons when reporting permission problems.

Better date parser - don't allow seconds and year in ftp listings on the same line.

Report errors in fish operations and recover from them.

Allow colors to be defined in the mc.lib file. Make it possible to avoid using a super-long line to redefine all colors.

Allow verbatim search in "Find File". Right now, the context is always interpreted as regular expression.

Filters in the editor should operate on the open file - don't close and reopen the file. They don't work on VFS now. For example, a gzipped files on FTP cannot be edited.

ftp and fish with home != '/' - readjust directory to the home.

Search in the viewer should have an option for case sensitive search.

Make "Find File" dialog more responsive. Keep state in a structure and preserve it when the search is suspended.

Use KDGKBENT ioctl on Linux console to find the mapping for shifted functional keys. Two mappings are widely used (Shift-F1 = F11 and Shift-F1 = F13). mc should adjust the keys to the mapping.

Alt-O should optionally show the current directory and move cursor down (as in older versions). Old functionality on files (go to "..") is not needed.

After 4.6.2 on 4.6.x branch

Make the internal editor reentrant. Add "edit menu file" to the editor menu.

Safe and restore file position in the viewer.

Consistent support for mc.lib.

Consistent support for terminal-specific settings.

New syntax for mc.ext - path check, desktop environment check. Detach X programs into a separate process group. Allow forcing the full path on local files.

Click on an image doesn't always work on remote vfs - local copy may be deleted before the application has time to load it.

Allow running executables from remote VFS. Possibly warn the user.

Add print dialog in the internal editor.

Implement logging, not just for VFS.

"Find file" should remember full starting path, not "." in the history.

In the 4.7 branch

Eliminate all pipes in subshell.c, run pwd after kill. Add support for more shells (e.g. ksh).

Internal terminal - no more console saving.

Implement a really Advanced Chown/Chmod?.

Support for multi-byte charsets (e.g. UTF-8).

sftp and fxp support in VFS.

New listing mode keyword "time": mtime or the time (atime, ctime) used to sort files.

Support for X clipboard.

Provide "patch" and "diff" editors. The patch editor will automatically adjust the line numbers of the following chunks when lines are deleted or inserted at the beginning of the file.

Provide context menus for files. Possible actions include: [compile], [CVS commit], [CVS diff -up], [pack], [unpack], [grep].

Make mc a CVS frontend comparable to Eclipse-3.0.

More standard Widgets: WTreeView, WDirectoryList, WGroupBox, WTextArea, WOpenDialog, WSaveDialog, WPrintDialog, WKeyBar.

Yet another old section ==

NOTE:

Everything below this point is the old TODO list.  It doesn't reflect
the current priorities of the developers, but may contain interesting
ideas still waiting for their implementation.

Bugs

• "Files" message flickers a lot when copying files.

• Make the extfs handle re-reads.

• Document (or remove) C-x C-r, C-x C-s.

• Check that all the help contexts exist on the help file.

• Make the buttonbar for the tree box work.

• In the incremental search mode, when backspacing, select the

correct file, do not stop in current file.

• Make C-y yank back all the killed text at once if you've just done

several kill operations in a row (C-k, M-d, etc).

• In learn keys, warn the user if he is trying to

i) define a same sequence as an already defined (if the keycode differs) ii) define a sequence, which is a prefix of other longer and already

defined sequence

Configuration

Documentation

• Convert the source mc.1 to mc.sgml and create automagically from it mc.1, mc.html, mc.hlp, mc.info, mc.tex, mc.txt etc.

Extensions

• Hotlist should allow people to edit the entry (like we do in the external panelize thing).

• Change ext.c to allow the %{..} to recursively expand any other %thingies.
• Write a general grow_string routine. This code is used in the internal viewer and would also be used in the profile.c code.

• A command to set the line length to a fixed value for viewing fixed length binary files. LIST does this with Ctrl-B and then prompts for a "record" length.

• Viewer: Mark all found matches, and when 'n' is pressed go to the next page, not the next match on the same screen (when there is more than one).

• In ftpfs_open, extfs_open, if we set local_filename to tmpnam, use a mechanism to set local_filename to another place on the local diskspace (this would be useful for copying, so that we would save some tmp space). This would require special care in file.c afterwards.

• In Listing mode... give at least three user-definable formats (using Janne's Listing mode editor) and assign hot-keys to both standard and user defined (what about c-x f [fbl123] ?).

• Shift-Home, Shift-End for the input line: home and end.

• Make a mechanism to lock all the mouse events and send them to the locking widget until unlocking is done.

• Sort with numerical extensions.

• Allow the program to execute a command even when we are on a vfs, maybe a special box, or make subshell code ignore the change directory request. Perhaps each vfs should store a local path attached to it, like in tarfs, extfs it would be the directory which contains the topmost tararchive, in ftpfs it would be the directory which we entered to ftp from.

• auto_hint_lines: a variable that would choose to use hint mode when at least auto_hint_lines are visible.

• Listbox: Mouse handler for the scrollbar: this will be hard with the current approach (since the listbox scrollbar is drawn outside the listbox control area).

• In file.c, we shouldn't need to get a full path name in order to work, we should instead canon the file name inside the tar.c (the only fs that relies on this), tar.c should know about the cwd (i think).

• Panelize the selected files.

• Recursive delete should (perhaps as an option) delete files just after they have been copied and not to delay deleting until everything was moved.

• When copying a tree (or moving or deleting), as an option act primarily on the regular files and at the end on directories recursively, so that we get complete high parts of the tree if something fails (useful for ftpfs).

• Put into a new and bigger Options/Configuration? dialog all the options we have now to set using .mc/ini manually.

• When after deleting there are no files in a panelized panel, restore it automagically to the real directory content.

• Files/Symlink? and Link should be able to do multiple links (if the target is a directory).

• Directory sizes should work in background using try_channels.

• Support of non-UNIX ls in ftpfs. Perhaps using an ascii configuration file similar to moxftp.

• Have an option to let the user choose the preferred keybindings. Currently, only the emacs keybindings are supported, add support for Norton Commander and vi keybindings.

• Find command should have a way to specify directories to skip.

• Add an option that will let listboxes do incremental searches.

Optimizations and cleanup

• Optimize the mcfs read and write code: make the code output 8k blocks all the time (if we have called mc_hint_readall) and probe the input for a possible cancel.

• When verbose is off, remove all the clutter on the screen about the files being copied.

• The viewer is calling view_update in many places, I call view_update after handling a key, should all the other view_updates be removed?

• If the viewer is too slow, some caching could be done. width and cols are currently computed each time they are needed.

• In the user menu, don't use the entries array, we can now grow dynamically. I should take a look at this one day, it's easy to fix.