This is the todo list for GNU Texinfo.
If you are interested in working on any of these, email bug-texinfo@gnu.org.

  Copyright 1992-2021 Free Software Foundation.

  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
  notice and this notice are preserved.

* Language:
  - generalize @deffn/etc. with variants that don't make index entries.
    - could use "@deffn @index{IX} ..." to use index IX instead of default
  - Better def... command syntax, explicitly marking variables, etc.
  - generalize @vtable/@ftable to any defined index.
    - maybe "@ftable @asis @index{IX}"
  - @mergeindex to do @syn*index without changing fonts.
  - multicolumn * width to take up `the rest'.
  - Allow @hsep/@vsep at @item, instead of just in template.
  - another table command to take N succeeding items and split them
    into M columns (see eplain).
  - support bibliographies with BibTeX (see web2c/doc for kludge prototype).
  - Support automatic line numbering of examples.
  - Glossary/general definition support (dumas msg 28 Nov 2003 17:09:57 +0100).

* texi2any:
  - give a warning for "makeinfo FOO.info" when "makeinfo FOO.texi" was meant
  - Improve the HTML customization API.
  - HTML: support thumbnails.
  - HTML: have a library of different CSS styles.
    http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2004-01/msg00025.html
  - Support output formats retaining the tree structure of Texinfo documents
    as parsed by the Parser.  A lisp-like format for GUILE? Maybe JSON?
  - Support LaTeX as a backend.
  - Support other graphical documentation browsers like GNOME DevHelp
    (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2015-03/msg00041.html)
  - Support the epub output format, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OEBPS.
    Suggested by Sean Young, 30 Nov 2008 20:13:11 (Savannah bug tracker)
  - Support the MediaWiki output format.

* TeX:
  - Index above @item allows page break.
  - Table of contents is misaligned if there are 10 or more [sub]sections.
  - @float captions should be typeset in a smaller font?
  - Reset the scriptfonts and scriptscriptfonts when font size changes.
  - Reasonable way to change fonts from the default (some work has been
    done), to allow for PostScript fonts, for example.
  - @multitable: handle @hsep and @vsep.
  - @multitable: repeat table headings if multiple pages long.
  - @multitable: support a heading line concept (<thead> in HTML).
  - Introduce new command to change \bindingoffset.
  - Include synctex support.
  - Include hyperlink \special's in the DVI output for xdvi, etc.
  - PDF: make each letter of the index (A, B, ...) a section in the TOC.
    From Carsten Dominik.
  - Use @ as the escape character in index files by default,
    after new texi2dvi is deployed (2022?).

* Doc:
  - Use/distribute pod2texi generated documentation of the perl modules in 
    tp generated in doc/tp_api -- when api is stable.
  - Documentation of the HTML customization is missing.

* Info:
  - For 'u' command, position cursor on the menu entry for the node
    we just came from
  - If K is describe-key, K M-left changes the node as M-left is
    analysed as multiple keys
  - unnecessary screen redrawing when scroll-last-node=Stop and you
    try to scroll at the bottom of the last node
  - a line continuation backslash sometimes flickers when moving a cursor
  - Perhaps comply with LANGUAGE setting on a per-node basis, to allow
    incremental translation of Texinfo files.
  - Display images when running under X, as Emacs 22+ can.
  - Search all nodes of dir file at startup, then can have
    INFO-DIR-SEPARATE-GROUPS and other such.  I.e., we could have
    programs (what is now "Individual utilities") in one node, library
    functions, in another, etc.  And how about supporting other languages?
  - Better dir file merging.
  - Global dir file (as in /etc/conf/dir) and texinfo config file
    specifying which info directories to search.  From Dale Mellor.
    http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/private/gnu-prog-discuss/2003q4/000439.html
  - Incorporate an X-based viewer, perhaps the old GNU xinfo widget
     (http://www.gnu.org/software/xinfo) or saxinfo
     or tkinfo (http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~boldt/tkinfo/).
  - Handle M-n, C-u m, and C-u g like Emacs Info (opening new windows).
  - A running view mode, to display the next node after the end of the
    last one, and be able to toggle display of a node's subnodes.  
    (Could be hard to implement though, because of how much code assumes 
    that only one node is in a window at once.)


* install-info:
  - replace dir file atomically in case install-info is interrupted
    (Pedrum Mohageri,
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2015-11/msg00027.html)
  - install-info --dir-file=dir2 --entry=info foo.info installs garbage
    from the misformatted --entry (and no entries from foo.info).
  - support info dir entries for other than the current info file name;
    see comments in menu_item_equal.
  - Monitor and improve the dir categories in existing manuals,
    following the Free Software Directory categories.  Much mail to
    developers has already been sent, what's needed now is to check new
    releases and make sure they are using the right categories.
    See the util/dir-example in the Texinfo distribution for our current
    recommended categories.
    For background, see the thread (which discusses a lot of other
    issues too) at
    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00011.html
    especially 
      http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00090.html
      http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00137.html

* Distribution:
  - generate txi-??.tex from .po's to make translators' jobs easier.
    From Akim and Karl E.

***********************************************************************

* Ideas that will not be implemented:

- Allow : in node names for info files, for names such as
  `class::method'.  Likewise index entries.  A quoting mechanism
  with DEL characters was implemented, but it is simpler to avoid : 
  altogether in node names and support : in index entries by changing
  the interpretation of index nodes slightly.  See
  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2019-01/msg00235.html

- Support general reference card creation.
  [Reference cards are too different from normal Texinfo.]

- Support installation of manuals in different languages, along these lines:
  . support a LINGUAS file or variable saying which subdirs LL in the
    source to descend into (under doc/).
  . within each subdir LL, install the info files into $infodir/LL,
    and run install-info on $infodir/LL/dir.
  . info (both emacs and standalone) should read $infodir/$LANG/dir
    as the first dir file, and likewise read info files first from
    $infodir/$LANG, before falling back to $infodir.
  . consider ways to avoid installing images in both places.
    In fact, images probably need to be installed in a subdir
    $infodir/MANUAL/ in the first place, to avoid conflicts of having
    the same image name in different manuals.
  For a test case, see texinfo cvs, with its one translated manual
  (info-fr.texi).
  From Wojciech Polak.
  ... Except, in practice, people just name their manuals with a
  suffix for the language, and that seems to work well enough.  There
  aren't that many manuals even in English, let alone other languages,
  and there are almost no manuals in multiple languages.

- Process Texinfo files directly instead of converting to Info:
  ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/people/phelps/tcltk/tkman.tar.Z, which
  uses Tcl/Tk 8.0 from ftp.smli.com in the /pub/tcl directory.
  From: Tom Phelps @ berkeley
  [This has the disadvantage of needing to be updated when the
  Texinfo language changes, so don't.]

- Call Ghostscript to get ASCII/jpg output for the @image command.
  [makeinfo should not try to be make, or assume it knows how the user
   wants to generate images.  Too many different methods are possible.]

- Get Info declared as a MIME Content-Type, and
  an `info:' URI scheme; a library consortium has proposed a
  completely different purpose for the URI scheme, but I don't know
  how to send comments, despite it being a "request for comments".  Sigh.
  There is mail about this in the bug-texinfo archives:
    http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2003-09/msg00086.html
  [I suppose it is too late, and it doesn't seem to matter in practice.]

- Change bars.  This is difficult or impossible in TeX,
  unfortunately.  To do it right requires device driver support.
  wdiff or ediff may be all we can do.  Merely specifying what should be
  changed is not obvious.  texdiff (http://www.robmar.net/TexDiff) does
  something reasonable for LaTeX, maybe it can be adapted.

- @else for the @if... conditionals.  Using (for example) an @iftex block
  followed by an @ifnottex block is good enough.
