Project Roadmap

The project roadmap outlines the future goals and milestones of the bluefish project.

Stable branch (2.2.*)

2.2.4

Done:

• fix the tab width for gtk 3.6
• fix 'document modified' status after a file save followed by undo all
• fix blocksync for multiline blocks
• fix in syntax scanning engine, most visible in python files
• fix a memory leak if a document with a large undo stack as last action was closed
• fix ctrl-scrollwheel zoom on gtk 3.6 with smooth scrolling enabled
• fix language syntax detection for new unsaved files
• fix various bugs in "toggle comment" function
• improve auto-completion popup drawing performance
• improve character encoding detection
• support paste special from other apps, for example paste a table from libreoffice, or an image from the gimp
• very long line detection
• if a tab is closed, switch to the previous opened tab instead of the last one in the list
• make a click in the margin select a single line, drag will still select multiple lines
• if an image is inserted from the sidebar (by doubleclick) into an untitled document, insert just the filename, and not a local URL
• add 'keep aspect ratio' option to image dialog
• several minor fixes to the split view mode
• support control-tab to switch to the most recently used documents
• strip trailing spaces on save (optional)
• make visible whitespace a session option
• improve simple search with some more options and search history
• improve smart indenting feature
• add feature save as copy
• fix language setting for chinese on windows
• bump minimum gtk version to 2.20:
  • Debian stable has gtk 2.20
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid) has 2.20
  • OSX package has ...
  • Windows packages uses 2.24
• english translation, so mac users with english first and another secondary language will not end up with the secondary language
• pylint, cssmin, jsmin, csstidy and php_beautifier integration
• html autocompletion improvements

2.2.5

Done:

• mark opened documents in the filebrowser bold
• add option for maximum filename length in document tab
• create feature to jump to other end of the block
• make snippet accelerators also work if the sidebar is hidden
• make spell checking work even if you disable syntax highlighting
• fix the html dialog spin buttons that inserted nothing if the value was 0
• fix delayed autocompletion popup
• add option to specify the minimum number of characters required before the auto-completion popup is shown
• improve 'move selection' feature
• add option to make html tag attributes show up as blocks
• show newlines and carriage returns in the 'visible spacing' feature
• autosave session-2.0 file and project files once in a while, linked to the autosave code to avoid spinning up the disk on laptops
• improve the undo/redo code performance by embedding the list in the data structures - implemented but needs more testing
• improve undo after autosave-recovery
• improve auto completion, if a tag is closed already, do not offer the autocompletion popup to close it.

In progress

• make strings as block configurable (so select block will work within strings) - working example in C bflang2 file, and in html tag attributes
• make $variable or function name autocompletion in for example php and python configurable - working example in php language file
• make language syntax detection for user defined custom extensions possible, so you can configure your own extensions for a language file
• add number of open documents to the statusbar somewhere
• improve function find_region_to_scan() in bftextview2_scanner.c such that multiple small areas to scan next to each other are scanned as a continuous region - implemented but some more tuning is needed
• improve updating the balanced tree by keeping a history of changes and apply them in one run in the idle callback (should improve speed if there are many changes on the buffer) - implemented but needs more testing
• fix autocompletion if a minimum length > 1 was set in the preferences. If you type for example in C "tmp;" it will still popup an autocompletion popup after you entered the ;
• use a list instead of a gtktexttag to keep track of locations that need spell checking
• improve autocompletion when a closing character like ; is already present, see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697664

To be done (or postponed):

• add delete empty lines feature
• fix PID detection for auto recovery on windows
• make 'file contains long lines' dialog pop up once, even if 500 files have long lines, and make it possible to disable this dialog (in progress: dialog can be disabled in the preferences)
• indenting a folded block indents just the visible part
• update zencoding to emmet
• add @page CSS at-rule to css syntax
• make the spell check color/style configurable
• improve/fix toggle comment when multiple comments are adjacent to each other, or when a selection does not align with the comment
• "bluefish -v" still does not print out specific version (e.g. rev7801), it prints out just the main version (2.2.4-rc1), possibly the titlebar should also show the svn revision number

• add vertical split to work on two documents side by side
• fix lorem_ipsum integration if no python is available
• make attributes in the language file a seperate tag so it becomes more flexible
• a feature to open all included files ..?
• color scheme dialog that detects all colors in a file and shows them in a single dialog
• a language feature such that a language file may indicate something is a filename or a color. Then we can have a generic feature that allows the user to open all referred files, open a specific file, edit a color, etc.
• better python editing support, and python-gtk
• gdb debug plugin?
• php xdebug plugin?
• jsbeautify integration
• svn, cvs and/or git integration, see http://linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2003/04/24/libsvn1.html?page=2 for svn help
• store current line number for each file in the project file
• relax-ng / dtd / xmlschema convert to bluefish language file
• more/better latex support
• an internal improvement: a multithreaded way to process buffers when loading and saving data. right now only the I/O is multi-threaded, but processing (encoding, long-line-detection, etc.) is done in the main thread. Remove trailing whitespace would also run in the main thread.

beyond 2.2.next

• make multiple-location edits possible, like for example sublime (www.sublimetext.com) has (e.g. insert a character in multiple locations)
• make the default snippets translatable
• make the language-syntax option descriptions translatable
• make the language-syntax file format more flexible so various possibilities can be made option such that you don't have to edit the language files

New ideas beyond the stable branch

• clipboard history
• undo redo browser
• storing undo/redo information in the project file