------------------------ vile bug/enhancement/wish list ------------------------ $Header: /usr2/foxharp/src/pgf/vile/RCS/buglist,v 1.260 1995/10/19 20:11:57 pgf Exp $ ---------------------- (E means enhancement, L,M,H are low, medium, high priority) E add ":n file" (:n means go to the next file in a series of files. :n file means go to that specific file - one can specify a + before file to indicate the vi command which should be executed when entering the command.) E now that paragraphs, sections, and sentences are all selectable with regexps, they (and the tabstop value) are prime candidates for moving into a "mode-values" set of values. A buffer would inherit either the global normal-mode values, or the global c-mode values. E :k, to set a mark, won't work as ":ka" or ":kb". Must use ":k a" E patterns as addresses do not work, e.g. ":/str1/,/str2/d". They're hard to parse the way things are set up right now. We could accumulate the whole commandline, and then parse it, the way real vi does, but we'd lose the "prompt and display last response" behavior. E should add an option to support file locking, rather than the current ifdef stuff. (this is only useful if we match the GNU locking protocol.) And it's not clear that in an NFS'ed environment that it's all that easy to get that style of locking right anyway. E the scrsearch functions could become region based -- as in "search for the next occurrence of the region", which would usually be a word. And the ^A/ version could become "a/ (search for the contents of buffer a), if you know what I mean. E g should become a region command. Then it could take ranges, as it should, and could also become an operator command. E collapse command execution code to as few places as possible. Its currently spread through execute(), operator(), docmd(), and usekreg(). E mlreply line should ideally be a one line buffer, so inline editing can be done on it. E I haven't even come close to testing vile for memory-full conditions. Some malloc() packages give 95% warnings -- perhaps something like that should be done for safety. E marks should perhaps be linked onto lines. this would make a lot of things a lot easier, since a mark would travel with the line, instead of having to be moved when the line is reallocated etc. the U line could be treated as a special mark. The "copied" flag needed by undo could be a special sort of mark as well. Implementation of the "tag stack" would be aided by this as well. L vile really ought to use unix-crypt if it is available. E can't search for a NUL in a buffer. E ":e" and ":e!" should share the same prompt data, which should be editable / history. They both should default (like vi!) to the current buffer. E for consistency, 'execute-macro-nn' should be 'execute-macro nn'; doing this would allow modification to eliminate a fixed number of macro-buffers. E should ifdef the 'autobuffer' code for users who do not need vi-style buffering. -------------- The ed 'transfer' and 'move' commands don't work. (to copy and move text around. e.g., :'a,'bt$.) -------------------------------- Though I use it, I'm still not quite satisfied with the qident stuff. It needs to be more flexible. That is, I'd like to make it user defined. For example find-tag $qidentifier should be expressable as a character class like find-tag &anyof "a-zA-Z_0-9:" in a macro. Or even more generally, as a regular expression: find-tag &scan "[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9:]\\*" A leading ^ would root the search at the current cursor position. Absence of a leading ^ would start at the current cursor position but would scan ahead until it found a match. That way I can redefine ^] to pick up the next word even if the cursor is before the start of the word (thus better mimicking vi's behavior). [ This can almost be done with the $match variable, e.g. 7 store-macro search-forward "[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9:]*" find-tag $match ~endm bind-key execute-macro-7 ^A-g - pgf ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Also, I encountered the following problem: I am editing foo.tex and call latex using ^X!latex foo.tex. There is an error, so latex waits for input -> vile sits waiting and nothing helps. I think this should be interruptable. I will agree with you that the ^X! command was not intended for this, but still... But ok, the real problem is that after I kill latex and vile comes back to life I can no longer filter parts of text using !fmt. The text just gets deleted. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I just grabbed a copy of xvi. I noted some interesting tidbits while reading the "differences between vi and xvi" document. Some of these would be nice in vile. As well as the normal named (conjugate) buffers, and the default one named @, several extra buffers named :, /, ? and ! contain the last command lines entered for each of the command types. So for instance, @: will re-execute the last colon command, or you can insert it into your buffer, edit it and then re-execute it (e.g. with dd@@). + In insert and replace modes, ^A has the same meaning as ^@ in vi, except that it works at any time, not just for the first character. Also, typing ^Bx, where x is the name of a conjugate buffer, inserts the contents of that buffer into the input stream at that point. The buffer named < always contains the last thing inserted, so that ^B< is the same as ^A. ------------------------ I wish ^X-! could execute shell commands async'ly, i.e. I should not have to wait/do nothing while waiting for the ouput of compiling. I should be able to edit stuff in other buffers or even ^X-^X to edit src codes while compilation is still going on. ------------ similar to above -- sub-commands run from ^X-! or ":[erw] !cmd" should be "interactive" to the extent that user's input should be sent to the cmd at least on a line-by-line basis (i.e. we can't send raw keystrokes -- we have to do canonical processing. of course, we should really use pty's, and reconnect input and capture output.) some commands like latex prompt for more input when partway done. ========(VMS-VILE)============================================================= Unfinished items on vax/vms (dickey@clark.net): + if the current directory has changed, offer to restore it on exit. (Note that if the _device_ portion has changed, the original directory should be restored anyway!). + add key bindings and other support to make the vt100 keypad work for me (e.g., like EDT). + see if I can decode ".dia" files, if so connect it to finderr.c + catch exception/signals, and restore terminal settings. + make write-pipes work (actually, flesh out to use 'npopen' coding scheme, like the MSDOS stuff). + I had a case in which I wanted to read the contents of one file into another; they had the same buffer name; the target buffer got the filename for the source, e.g., :e []foo - read and determined version # ok :r [-.temp]foo - current filename reset to [-.temp]foo ------------------------------------------------------------ it would be nice if vile would fold text... This feature appeared in uEmacs version 3.10.23 and you can use archie/xarchie to file fue.tar.Z (fue - folding-micro-emacs). [ someone said they were going to fold this in, so to speak. i'm not real comfortable with the idea, since the uemacs code causes the LINE struct to grow _enormously_ ] ----------- When I execute a keyboard macro using ^X-& I cannot repeat this using the dot command. Instead, the last command in the macro is repeated. [ this is because '.' doesn't do @ macros either...] ------------------------------ Can you add the '>' character to the list of comment chars for paragraph reformatting? I would live to be able to reformat mail quotes (like shown above). [ pgf notes: I did this, as chris suggested, but formatregion should use the comments regexp to match a comment delimiter at the beginning of line, and should insert the comment delimiter of the _second_ line (so that boxed C comments work right)in subsequent reformatted lines, including leading but not trailing whitespace. indentlen should be counted _after_ the width of such a comment delimiter. this would make paragraphs that are indented way after the delimiter keep their indent. commented paragraphs should end when exp->mlen for the comment regexp is equal to llength(DOT), i.e. it's the whole line. (we'll need to take the $ off the end of the comment regexp). ] -------------------- enhancement: reimplement error finder using regexps. ------------------------------ Another enhacement. How about a history file. say I have been using vile and quit and come back in later I can use the history file. -------------------------- In a xterm window the down arrow (which sends ESC-O-B) works for individual presses. If you hold down the key then letter Bs get peppered through out the file. It appears that the ESC is occasionally being missed so that the following OB puts a B in the file. In my case I'm on a workstation running 4.1.3 and xterm using rlogin to connect to a 690 server (lightly loaded) running 4.1.3 and running vile on the 690. I just ran vile locally and didn't see the problem. ------------------------------- I found a bug (new with 3.59) on our Pyramid SVR4 (but not Pyramid SVR3, SunOS 4.1.1, AIX 3.2) where xvile tmp & pops up the xvile window briefly, the window dies, the xterm I started xvile from says [1] + suspended (tty input) xvile3.59 tmp and then after a couple seconds the xterm itself vanishes! However, xvile tmp works fine, except that the process is in the foreground. > The bug on the Pyramid SVR4 machine with xvile & suspending itself, > committing suicide, and then blowing away the xterm still exists. > For the time being I just remember to run xvile on a different > machine. ----------------------------- apply Alistair's min/max regexp patch ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Is there any way to use termcap to define all of the window parameters, but still use ANSI escapes for colors? Elvis allows me to do this under Linux on the terminal screen and a couple of systems allow Elvis to change the foreground and background colors under an xterm. If I tell Vile to compile using ANSI instead of termcap it works but it doesn't seem to recognize any of my termcap variables (which means it doesn't get the right screen size or exits with incorrect colors). ----------------------------- With vim 1.27 you can configure its behaviour regarding backspace using the 'backspace' variable. From the help file: backspace (bs) number 0 0 standard Vi, 1 delete NL, 2 delete all i.e. if bs is non-zero, you can backup to the previous line, and if it's a 2, you can backup past the insertion point. i don't think this is optimal -- i think you should be able to choose independently whether you backup past the newline or past the insertion point. in any case, vile won't let you back up past the newline during an insert. when _not_ in insert, you can rebind ^H to backward-character. --------------------------- When you do a :b you should have line completion for the name. --------------------------- How can I read the status of a shell command when I execute a shell-command? Although the shell command has a $STATUS=1 the status of the status variable is TRUE. --------------------------- you can't use ! as a regular expression delimiter, as in: :s!pat!replace!g because the parser treats ":s!" as if it's ":q!" or ":w!". ------------------------- width of a region is kept in units of offset, not of columns. i think this will break rectangular inserts of non-rectangular regions, where the longest line may not extend to the furthest column, due to tabs in other lines. ------------------------- 2) When I use the MKS "fmt" program to format a paragraph in vile, a tmp file (aaxxx.tmp) is always dropped out in my current working directory. This was not a problem in the previous version of PCVILE (the one I compiled with Turbo C++). I.E., when I exit vile43 after using the fmt command, I've got a temp file called "aaac1.tmp" (for example) in my current working directory. It's annoying. ----------------------------- I'm using the DOS version and I prefer to use 80x28 or even higher res like 80x50 by setting set sres=80x50 in vile.rc. The problem is that when a command is executed with :! the mode switches back to 80x25. It switches back to 80x25 permanently. I think it's acceptable that it switches to 80x25 when it's in shell command execution. However, technically it should switch back to the preferred mode when it's done. [ can anyone confirm or deny this is still true? ] --------------------------- the borland console driver won't display the cursor on blank lines until after you've refreshed the screen at least once, e.g. with ^L. must be something to do with color initialization, or something like that... --------------------------- running a SunOS4.1.3 binary of vile on Solaris2.3 causes the "interrupted system call" problem, no doubt due to the differing BSD/SysV signal() semantics. [ probable workaround: ":set noworking" ] ---------------------- Another thing that would be really helpful would be a description of the $debug variable, and what it does, how it works. ------------------------------- the docs for the &right function disagree, in vile.hlp and macros.doc. the code seems to do what vile.hlp says. the macros.doc behavior seems more rational, since the current behavior can i think be duplicated more easily with &mid than the macros.doc-style behavior. (vile.hlp says that we take the substring starting at the given position. macros.doc says we take the substring starting the given number of chars from the end.) --------------------------------- there should be better support in vile for reading bits of shell output into a buffer -- ":r !foo" is a little primitive when trying to insert a single word into a line. --------------------------------- autoindent skips blank lines when looking for the indent value. apparently real vi doesn't? ---------------------- currently can't pop/untag from within macro [really? why is this?] ------------------ are there still reentrancy problems in xvile when mousing around during long-running operations. ---------------------- could the attribute selection logic be used to emulate vi's behavior of replacing the last char of a change operation to '$'? (but only for text which does not span a line) --------------------------- Another problem with '1 shell-command ' With the option '1' vile don't prompt for [Return] but the screen always 'hops'. (scrolls 1 line forward and backward) ------------------------- there should be a way to reference both the global and local values of modes from within macros, so that values can be saved and restored. ------------------------- there should be a way to reference buffer attributes of the currently- executing macro (or stack of macros). ------------------------- [regarding the ^X^X find-error code (from tom)] Rather than have the long if-then-else-if sequence, we could have a table of structs something like struct { int file; int line; int msg; REGEX *pattern; } ERR_PATTERN; where the int-members correspond to the \1 through \9 special symbols. If we use a meta character such as '%', we can define something like "\"\([a-z]%f\)\" Line \([0-9][0-9]*%l\)" to substitute as a regular expression "\"\([a-z]\1\)\" Line \([0-9][0-9]*\2\)" I believe that I suggested a few months ago that the expressions be put into a special buffer as well, rather than trying to make a mode out of them. ------------------------- [ how do i test this? ] In xvile, when the load is high and the machine stalls for a while and I key in several keystrokes ahead, it takes the first of those keystrokes and replaces the later keys by it i.e. when several events simultaneously arrive, it doesn't do the right thing (process them in order). ----------------- when motion keys or pasting is used during an insertion, we should break the insertion into multiple undoable chunks. ----------------- pasting to a view-only buffer does not generate an error message. ---------------------------- some folks would like to see smooth-scrolling enforced. it seems they have keyboards that repeat just a little faster than their screen can keep up, and they'd like vile to scroll rather than jump with the typahead. ----------- XVILE BUG: - If I click on the "maximize" gadget, it gets _really_ big. Like, many times bigger than the screen big; I suspect that it is maximizing to a number of *characters* equal to the number of *pixels* available or something. If I click on the same gadget (after dragging that part of the window onto the screen), which does a normalize, it crashes. I am use vile 4.5 and xvile on HP/UX 9.01. I use vuewm as my window manager (a motif variant). [I would guess that the suspicion of the person reporting the bug is correct concerning the behavior of the window manager during maximization. I don't have this problem with fvwm. pgf's changes to eliminate the hardcoded maximum width and height will probably fix the core dumps. I'll look into seeing if there is some protocol which we're not observing with regard to maximization. -kev] ------------------ - I would like an option whereby if I have more than one file on the command line, the display opens with one window per buffer, so I can visibly see all the files available. ---------------------- if you have lines like 123 1234 12 it's impossible to select them as a rectangle, since the middle line is longest. ---------------- It would be useful to have a search that is constrained to a certain movment. For example, I might want to look for the string "foo" over the next paragraph, not the whole document. This would really be useful to programmers who want to look for the instance of a variable or a function call only within the current scope (or #if). ---------------- xvile: Is it possible to have an optional horizontal scrollbars ? (just for maniac users) ---------------------------- on the first attempt to insert a quoted ^C (i.e. ^V^C) it works, but also quotes the next character (e.g. the ESC). after the first time, ^C doesn't work anymore. (this seems to be linux-specific, and i'm running an old (pre 1.0) kernel. so i'll check it on a newer system. it's not getting the later SIGINT's at all, and it returns ^V a _second_ time, after getting the first SIGINT. very strange.) ------------------------ under DOS, ^P character turns on the printer. argh. actually, this only happens if compiled with borland. it uses getch() instead of intdos() to get the char. (see ttgetc()) that's probably at least part of the answer. --------------- how about a mode that supports autosaving to the backup-file, instead of to the original file -- useful for system crashes. ----------------- rectangular operations don't work right if there are control characters to the left of the rectangle. (physically they work, but the visual effect is wrong. i'm not sure what the right thing to do is.) ------------------------- double quote characters (and probably other special chars) are interpreted incorrectly on the lhs of a map command. for instance: map ^K" WBi"^[Ea"^[ will result in ^K WBi as the lhs, leaving ^[Ea"^[ as the rhs. the workaround is to escape the " in the lhs: map ^K\" WBi"^[Ea"^[ (this map surrounds the current word in double quotes) ----------------------------- It should be fine if the tabulate key (to have the file completion) understands the SHELL variables. For example, if I type $HOME, xvile gives the choice. ----------------------------- Would you please add another hook: modify-hook. I thought this is useful, for example, if I attempt to insert, delete (in general, modify) text in a read-only file, I like it to prompt if the user wants to PVCS-lock it. A message would look something like this: File is read-only, check out? ----------------------------- contrary to the vile.hlp text, binding to the interrupt{} terminal character does not fully change intrc and the user's interrupt character. ----------------------------- We use xvile with french characters (8 bit). And the change/delete word (cw, dw) does not work with a word including 8 bit character. The substitution/delete is done up to the 8 bit character not including it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- VMS6.0 on VAXstation 4000/90. DEC C for OpenVMS VAX compiler version V4.0-000. Shared library (specified in VMSSHARE.OPT) is DECC$SHR.EXE instead of the default VAXCRTL.EXE. symptoms: vile can't read vile.rc, or vile.hlp. reason: on this setup, the access() library routine seems broken. my test program showed that it returned -1 for existant and non-existant files. solution: I had to add a #define HAVE_ACCESS 0 in estruct.h (actually, I just put it in fileio.c). [ there's a fix in estruct.h, but untested ] ----------------------------------------------------------------- DOS: wildcarding in the top directory: c: cd \ vile a*.bat (will not open autoexec.bat) does not work, because Watcom's opendir() routine only succeeds on the root directory if it is specified as '\'. no other name for it seems to work. stat won't work on it either. (we try to open it as ".", not an unreasonable thing to do.) sigh. i hate DOS. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Mips RISCos5.0 machines: Error: random.c, line 625: 'SIG_BLOCK' undefined, ... Error: random.c, line 637: 'SIG_SETMASK' undefined, ... [ i thought i could provide fallback definitions of those, but the values are different on sunos and linux, and are probably different again on Mips RISCos5.0, bless it's broken little heart. ] ----------------------------------------------------------------- we should consider adding user-customizable menu or button support to xvile: "Right now, you have most of the major functions as strings that can be called from the macro language. Suppose you made icons or something for those strings, and then let the user string the icons (or maybe have icons trigger macros and have a set of macros for most of the basic stuff as a default package) together to form new icons they could put in some sort of icon bar. The windows (boo! Hiss!) users would go nuts! Also, put some of this into the pull down menus, and people would stand to cheer and applaud. " ----------------------------------------------------------------- I think I found a couple of very minor bugs in vile. Possible bug #1) I'm using xvile right now because ^S doesn't seem to work correctly in regular vile yet (must be an HP 9.05 thing, I'm not sure yet). I had thought you turned flow control off in vile, but I want to do more testing before I call this a bug. Anyway, do this: On a page with several lines of text, do this operation on the first one: :s/^/> / Now, using the mouse (or 'q'), sweep the next couple of lines. To make things interesting, sweep to the end of the second to last line, but not the last line itself, so the highlighted text looks like this: xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx instead of xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x Now, do a ^A-&-^S On my machine, the last line of the highlighted text isn't touched. I'm thinking it should be... ----------------------------------------------------------------- the command ":r !ls" should not require the space. ----------------------------------------------------------- when using wrapmargin, it is impossible to break up long lines consisting of a single word. [vi doesn't do this] ----------------------------------------------------------- - the layering of the map code with respect to the record/replay code that implements '.', the keyboard macros, and the '@' command execution is severely broken. if you have a :map that executes a '@a' command in the middle, the contents of register a are readied for replay, but input continues to come from the :map string until it is ended, and only then so we dip down to the lower level and start getting the result of '@a'. a similar thing happens with '.' used in a :map, only it seems even worse, since recording isn't started/stopped correctly. [this has been fixed for the @a case, but in a sloppy fashion. it should be cleaned up. -pgf ] ----------------------------- Using xvile, if I [oO]pen a new line or do insert at the beginning of a line, and then paste in some text using the mouse, xvile inserts an extra blank line. that is, if I have foo bar and I try to paste in 'hi' under the foo, I get foo hi bar this only seems to happen in autoindent mode at the very beginning of the line. it does *not* happen if the preceeding line is indented, or if I type a space before pasting. ---------------- only "reverse" works as a visual-match hilite under DOS. --------------- a newly entered search string (even an identical one) should turn highlighting back on --------------- It would be nice to make the cursor invisible while doing highlighted selection, since xterm cannot blink the cursor, and the selection has an apparent hole. visual-match highlighting back on. this is surprisingly hard, due to the layering of readpattern() and kbd_reply. --------------- While we're on the subject of bugs, let me tell you about another one that I've long noticed when I try to insert such text. I would like to do :unsetl ai before pasting in the text (since I normally have auotindent on). But that has no effect. Even :setall shows that autoindent is still on. Instead I have to do :setl noai. Annoying. [ i agree -- shouldn't "setl nonumber" and "unsetl number" be synonymous? -pgf] [ I've gotten used to it as a quirk: "unsetl" deletes a flag that shadows the global setting. I wish (however) that there were a nice way to highlight the flags that are shadowed -dickey] --------------- running a shell command from xvile should arguably spawn a new xterm. it should certainly do it in a new window. --------------- vile trims all trailing whitespace when user inserts a space that triggers wrapmargin, vi trims only the whitespace inserted during the current command. [ i'm not sure i consider this a bug. vile plays loose with whitespace in many such situations. if you're using wrapmargin, you're probably not worried about trailing whitespace anyway. -- pgf ] --------------- the 'read-hook' is triggered at a point where the name of the buffer that's being read isn't necessarily known. Perhaps it would be better to trigger this on the first use after reading it?