\input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*- @c %**start of header @setfilename tasks.info @settitle GNU Task List @c This date is automagically updated when you save this file: @set lastupdate October 24, 2002 @c %**end of header @c On behalf of the Volunteer Coordinators, I humbly request that anyone @c who adds an entry to this file please add a pointer to some more info @c about that project. People ask us (gvc@gnu.org) for more information @c about these projects and it's embarrassing to ask around and find out @c that nobody remembers what the project was supposed to be, or do. @c We don't need a huge elaborate ISO-9001 document, just a couple of @c paragraphs or a URL or something that explains what the e.g. ``stalker'' @c project should do. It will save us all time in the future. @c Thanks, toby@gnu.org @c April 27, 2002 @dircategory GNU organization @direntry * Tasks: (tasks). GNU task list. @end direntry @setchapternewpage off @copying The GNU task list, last updated @value{lastupdate}. Copyright (C) 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. @quotation 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. @end quotation @end copying @titlepage @title GNU Task List @author Free Software Foundation @author last updated @value{lastupdate} @page @vskip 0pt plus 1filll @insertcopying @end titlepage @contents @ifnottex @node Top, Intro, (dir), (dir) @top GNU Task List @insertcopying See also @uref{http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html#helpgnu} for other suggested tasks. @end ifnottex @menu * Intro:: * Highest Priority:: * Documentation:: * Unix-Related Projects:: * Kernel Projects:: * Extensions:: * Java Projects:: * X Windows Projects:: * Network Projects:: * Encryption Projects:: * Other Projects:: * Languages:: * Education:: * Games and Recreations:: @end menu @node Intro, Highest Priority, Top, Top @chapter About the GNU Task List If you did not obtain this file directly from the GNU project and recently, please check for a newer version. You can ftp the task list from any GNU FTP host in directory @file{/pub/gnu/tasks/}. The task list is available there in several different formats: @file{tasks.text}, @file{tasks.texi}, @file{tasks.info}, and @file{tasks.dvi}. @c to fix an overfill, join the paragraphs -len The task list is also available on the GNU World Wide Web server: @uref{http://www.gnu.org/prep/tasks_toc.html}. If you start working steadily on a project, please let @email{gvc@@gnu.org} know. We might have information that could help you; we'd also like to send you the GNU coding standards. Because of the natural tendency for most volunteers to write programming tools or programming languages, we have a comparative shortage of applications useful for non-programmer users. Therefore, we ask you to consider writing such a program. Typically, a new program that does a completely new job advances the GNU project, and the free software community, more than an improvement to an existing program. Typically, new features or new programs advance the free software community more, in the long run, than porting existing programs. One reason is that portable new features and programs benefit people on many platforms, not just one. At the same time, there tend to be many volunteers for porting---so your help will be more valuable in other areas, where volunteers are more scarce. Typically, it is more useful to extend a program in functionality than to improve performance. Users who use the new functionality will appreciate it very much, if they use it; but even when they benefit from a performance improvement, they may not consider it very important. Finally, if you think of an important job that free software cannot solve yet that is typically solved by proprietary software, please send a short description of that job to @email{tasks@@gnu.org} so that we can add it to this task list. @node Highest Priority, Documentation, Intro, Top @chapter Highest Priority This task list mentions a large number of tasks that would be more or less useful. With luck, at least one of them will inspire you to start writing. It's better for you to work on any task that inspires you than not write free software at all. But if you would like to work on what we need most, here is a list of high priority projects. @itemize @bullet @item If you are good at writing documentation, please do that. Pick a system or program you like, and write a Free tutorial or manual for it. @item Help to finish the missing features of the @command{docbook2texi} so that as many Docbook tags as possible can be translated into reasonable Texinfo. See @uref{http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/todo.html} for a task list of what needs to be done. @item If you are very good at C programming and interested in kernels, you can help develop the GNU HURD, the kernel for the GNU system. Please have a look at @uref{http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html}, and then join the HURD mailing lists at @uref{http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-contact}. @item If you are a Scheme fan, you can help develop Guile. Please have a look at the URL @uref{http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html} and then contact the Guile developers at @email{guile-devel@@gnu.org}. @item Improve the facilities for translating other languages into Scheme, so that Guile can provide support for a variety of languages. @item A package to convert programs written using MS Access into Scheme, making use of a free data base system and the GTK toolkit. @item A general-purpose document viewing program that can handle PostScript, DVI, PDF, HTML, RTF, Word format and Word Perfect format. @item Help develop software to emulate Windows NT on top of GNU systems. For example, you could help work on Wine. See @uref{http://www.winehq.org/}. @ignore @c panda is a PDF generator library released under the GPL @c http://www.stillhq.com/cgi-bin/getpage?area=panda&page=index.htm @item A free replacement for pdflib. This is a library for generating PDF. @end ignore @item Add gettext support to GNU programs that don't have it already. (Please contact the developers of the specific packages that you want to work on.) @item Develop a substitute, which runs on GNU systems, for some very popular or very important application that many non-programmers use on Windows, and which has no comparable free equivalent now. @end itemize @node Documentation, Unix-Related Projects, Highest Priority, Top @chapter Documentation We very urgently need documentation for many existing parts of the system. Note that there are proprietary manuals for many of these topics, but proprietary manuals do not count, for the same reason proprietary software does not count: we are not free to copy and modify them. We do not recommend any non-free materials as documentation. @itemize @bullet @item A reference document for SQL for use as a standard for implementors of free software versions of SQL. @item A manual for libstdc++. @ignore @c the Indian TeX Users Group has completed a freely distributable version of a LaTex manual - http://www.tug.org.in/tutorials.html @item A unified manual for La@TeX{}. (Existing documentation is non-free.) @end ignore @ignore @c docbook definitive guide http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/ is now FDL @item A manual for Docbook SGML format. @end ignore @item A tutorial introduction to Midnight Commander. @item A thorough manual for RCS. @item A reference manual for Mach. @item A reference manual for the GNU Hurd features in GNU libc. @item A manual for writing Hurd servers. @ignore @c this is done. @item A manual for GNU sed. @end ignore @item Reference manuals for C++, Objective C, Pascal, Fortran 77, and Java. @item A tutorial manual for the C++ STL (standard template library). @item A tutorial manual for Gforth. @item GNU Objective-C Runtime Library Manual; this would be a reference manual for the runtime library functions, structures, and classes. Some work has been done on this job. @item Manuals for GNUstep: developer tutorial, developer programming manual, developer reference manual, and user manual. @item A manual for Ghostscript. @item A manual for TCSH. @item A coherent free reference manual for Perl. Most of the Perl on-line reference documentation can be used as a starting point, but work is needed to weld them together into a coherent manual. @c Bradley M. Kuhn is working on this. Refer volunteers to @c him. @item A good free Perl language tutorial introduction. The existing Perl introductions are published with restrictions on copying and modification, so that they cannot be part of a GNU system. bkuhn made a start at a free tutorial, but a lot of work is needed. @item A manual for PIC (the graphics formatting language). @item A book on how GCC works and why various machine descriptions are written as they are. @item A manual for programming applications for X11. @item Manuals for various X window managers. @item Reference cards for those manuals that don't have them: C Compiler, Texinfo, Termcap, and maybe the C Library. @item Many utilities still need documentation. @end itemize @node Unix-Related Projects, Kernel Projects, Documentation, Top @chapter Unix-Related Projects @itemize @bullet @ignore @item Modify the GNU @code{dc} program to use the math routines of GNU @code{bc}. @end ignore @item Rewrite @code{indent} from scratch to make it cleaner. @item Write a free software replacement for the @code{agrep} program. @item Less urgent: make a replacement for the ``writer's workbench'' program @code{style}, or something to do the same kind of job. Compatibility with Unix is not especially important for this program. @end itemize @node Kernel Projects, Extensions, Unix-Related Projects, Top @chapter Kernel-Related Projects @itemize @bullet @item An over-the-ethernet debugger stub that will allow the kernel to be debugged from GDB running on another machine. This stub needs its own self-contained implementation of all protocols to be used, since the GNU system will use user processes to implement all but the lowest levels, and the stub won't be able to use those processes. If a simple self-contained implementation of IP and TCP is impractical, it might be necessary to design a new, simple protocol based directly on ethernet. It's not crucial to support high speed or communicating across gateways. It might be possible to use the Mach ethernet driver code, but it would need some changes. @item A shared memory X11 server to run under MACH is very desirable. The machine specific parts should be kept well separated. @item An implementation of CIFS, the ``Common Internet File System,'' for the HURD. This protocol is an offshoot of SMB. @item Support (in Linux?) for dumping the non-textual contents of an SVGA console. @end itemize @node Extensions, Java Projects, Kernel Projects, Top @chapter Extensions to Existing GNU Software @itemize @bullet @item Enhance GCC. See files @file{PROJECTS} and @file{PROBLEMS} in the GCC distribution. @item Interface GDB to Guile, so that users can write debugging commands in Scheme. This would also make it possible to write, in Scheme, a graphical interface that uses GTK and is tightly integrated into GDB. @item Extend Octave to support programs that were written to run on Khoros. @item Rewrite Automake in Scheme, so it can run in Guile. Right now it is written in Perl. There are also other programs, not terribly long, which we would also like to have rewritten in Scheme. @item Finish the partially-implemented C interpreter project. @item Help with the development of GNUstep, a GNU implementation of the OpenStep specification. @item Add features to GNU Make to record the precise rule with which each file was last recompiled; then recompile any file if its rule in the makefile has changed. @item Add a few features to GNU @code{diff}, such as handling large input files without reading entire files into core. @item An @code{nroff} macro package to simplify @code{texi2roff}. @item A queueing system for the mailer Smail that groups pending work by destination rather than by original message. This makes it possible to schedule retries coherently for each destination. Talk to @email{tron@@veritas.com} and @email{woods@@weird.com} about this. @end itemize @node Java Projects, X Windows Projects, Extensions, Top @chapter Java Projects @itemize @bullet @item The GNU Classpath Extensions project is looking for help. classpathx builds free versions of Sun's java extension libraries, the packages in the javax namespace. @item Write a replacement for the javadoc utility. The Classpath (@uref{http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath}) team has already made a start to one. @end itemize @node X Windows Projects, Network Projects, Java Projects, Top @chapter X Windows Projects @itemize @bullet @item An emulator for Macintosh graphics calls on top of X Windows. @ignore @c winelib does this http://www.winehq.org/ @item A package that emulates the API of Visual C++'s Foundation Classes (MFC), but operates on top of X11. It need not match the screen appearance provided by MFC. Instead, it would be best to use GTK, so as to give coherence with GNOME. @end ignore @ignore @c GNOME Basic is doing this @item A compatible replacement for Visual Basic, running on top of X11. It need not match the screen appearance of Visual C++. Instead, it would be best to use GTK, so as to give coherence with GNOME. @end ignore @ignore @c Denemo is doing this. @item A music playing and editing system. This should work with LilyPond, a GNU program for music typesetting. @end ignore @ignore @c GNUskies should do this @item An ephemeris program to replace xephem (which is, alas, too restricted to qualify as free software). @end ignore @c Gepetto (@url{http://laurent.riesterer.free.fr/gepetto/intro-main.html}, @c @email{laurent.riesterer@@free.fr}), according to @email{gnueval@@gnu.org}, @c does the job of displaing dancers but does not allow editing notation. @item Make sure the Vibrant toolkit works with LessTif instead of Motif. @item A program to display and edit Hypercard stacks. @item A two-dimensional outliner program, which lets you draw graph structures of textual items, and then display them in various ways. @ignore @c done @item A program for graphic morphing of scanned photographs. @end ignore @ignore @c Done by gLabels @item Software for designing and printing business cards. @end ignore @end itemize @node Network Projects, Encryption Projects, X Windows Projects, Top @chapter Network Projects @itemize @bullet @ignore @c Cornell has released a program for this. @item A teleconferencing program which does the job of CU-SeeMe (which is, alas, not free software). @end ignore @ignore @c Bishop Bettini is working on this. @item A free ICQ-compatible server program. (The ICQ server itself is not free software.) @end ignore @ignore @c if anyone knows what this means please send email to gvc@gnu.org @item Free software like Stalker for operating a web server for email services. @end ignore @end itemize @node Encryption Projects, Other Projects, Network Projects, Top @chapter Encryption Projects These projects need to be written outside the US by people who are not US citizens, to avoid problems with US export control law. @itemize @bullet @ignore @c libcrypt is doing this. @item A free library for public-key encryption. This library can probably be developed from the code for the GNU Privacy Guard. @end ignore @ignore @item @c GNUtls is doing this. An implementation of SSLv3 (more precisely, TLSv1) which has distribution terms compatible with the GNU GPL. We know of a GPL-covered implemention of a version of SSL that you can use as a starting point. @end ignore @ignore @c akopia interchange appears to do this. if you'd like to re-open this @c item please let the GVC know what you want (in some detail) @item Free software for doing secure commercial transactions on the web. This should be based on libgcrypt and GNUtls. @end ignore @end itemize @node Other Projects, Languages, Encryption Projects, Top @chapter Other Projects If you think of others that should be added, please send them to @email{tasks@@gnu.org}. @itemize @bullet @ignore @c vcg as of version 1.30 (current as of 2002-10-24) is GPL @c toby 2002-10-24 @item A library for automatic graph layout. VCG version 1.0, which was free software, might provide a base for this. @end ignore @item A data visualization program along the lines of xgobi or ggobi. @item A graph visualization program, which would use that library and provide a front end for manual and interactive intervention so as to provide a full substitute for equivalent proprietory software. It would be good to support DOT format as input, and perhaps other formats. @c Such proprietary software is daVinci and graphviz, but are uncommon enough @c that we don't mention them here publicly. @c http://www.research.att.com/~erg/graphviz/info/lang.html @c Some useful information about graph drawing programs can be found here @c http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/gdlinks.html @c At the time of making this entry, VCG's website was @c http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/users/sander/html/gsvcg1.html @item A ``one stop shopping system'' for advocates involved with social justice or other non-profit campaigns. The idea would be to create an easy-to-use interface to software that would allow someone to register a domain for their organisation, build a website, and set up mailing lists. The software would need options to easily do all this, and be made easy for non-hackers. Mainly the work would involve bringing together a number of existing tools with an overriding configuration program. @ignore LinuxBIOS is doing this @item A simple PC BIOS. On most new PCs, the BIOS is stored in writable memory (misleadingly known as ``flash ROM''). In order to have a wholly free system on these PCs, we need a free BIOS. This task is made simpler by the fact that this BIOS need only support enough features to enable a boot-loader such as LILO or GRUB to finish loading the kernel. Neither Linux nor Mach actually uses the BIOS once it starts up. Also, it is not absolutely necessary to do all the many diagnostics that an ordinary BIOS does (though it would be useful to do some of them). However, there may be a need to configure certain data in the computer in a way that is specific to each model of computer. @end ignore @item An imitation of Page Maker or Ventura Publisher. @item An imitation of @code{dbase2} or @code{dbase3}. (How dbased!) Harbour, a free replacement for Clipper, would provide a useful start. @uref{http://www.harbour-project.org/}. @ignore @c being done by Jonas etc. @item A general ledger program, including support for accounts payable, account receivables, payroll, inventory control, order processing, etc. @end ignore @item A free replacement for Glimpse, which is not free software. Swish does some parts of the job, but not all. @item Software for desktop publishing. We are extending Emacs into a WYSIWYG word processor, to handle primarily linear text; what this item proposes is software focused on page layout. @ignore It looks like TruePrint will fill this gap @item A program to typeset C code for printing, to make it easier to read on paper. For ideas on what to do, see the book, @display Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs, Ronald M. Baecker and Aaron Marcus, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10745-7 @end display But you don't have to do exactly what they propose. @end ignore @ignore @c This is now being worked on -- rms, 22 June 1998 @item A program to convert Microsoft Word documents to text/enriched, TeX, LaTeX, Texinfo, or some other format that free software can edit. @end ignore @ignore @c People are helping the developer of siff release it as free software. @item A free replacement for siff (sometimes called sif). This would be a program to find similar files in a large file system, ``similar'' meaning that the files contain a significant number of common substrings that are of a certain size or greater. You can find some information about siff (which is, unfortunately, not free software) at @uref{ftp://ftp.cs.arizona.edu/reports/1993/TR93-33.ps.Z}. @end ignore @ignore @c This is being developed -- rms, 3 May 1998 @item A free replacement for the semi-free Qt library. @end ignore @ignore @c Ogg Vorbis is doing this, see @url{http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/index.html} or contact @email{Monty }. @item High-quality music compression software. (Talk with @email{mt@@sulaco.org} for relevant suggestions.) Unfortunately we cannot implement the popular MP3 format due to patents, so this job includes working out some other non-patented format and compression method. @end ignore @item A program to play sound distributed in ``Real Audio'' format, if only because there is a large corpus of data encoded in this format. We ask that you encode audio data in Ogg/Vorbis format since it is publically documented and there are Free Software encoders and decoders available. @ignore @c we do NOT want to provide software to encode data into proprietary secret formats. People should use ogg/vorbis or another well-documented format instead @item A program to generate ``Real Audio'' format from audio input. @end ignore @item Programs to handle audio in RTSP format. @ignore @c Software patents have made this domain off limits to free software. @item An MPEG III audio encoder/decoder (but it is necessary to check, first, whether patents make this impossible). @c Chris Hofstader is working on a non-Festival speech-generation program. @c Mario Lang reports that Festival needs only @c to be 2-5 times faster to work well with Emacspeak. @item Speech-generation programs that are faster than the Festival engine. This might be done by optimizing Festival. @c We have a project now. @item Speech-recognition programs (single-speaker, disconnected speech is sufficient). @end ignore @item A braille translation and formatting system which can convert marked up documents into braille. This should let the user customize the braille translation rules; it would be good to divide it into a device-independent part plus drivers. Contact Jason White, @email{jasonw@@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU}. @ignore Being done @item A program to display text word by word, always showing just one word at a time. This method permits much faster reading than ordinary text display. If you want to work on this, contact @email{stutz@@dsl.org} to learn more. @end ignore @item More scientific mathematical subroutines. (A clone of SPSS is being written already.) @item A scientific data collection and processing tool, perhaps something like Scientific Workbench and/or Khoros, @item A free replacement for SciRun, which is not free software. @item A program to calculate properties of molecules by solving the Schroedinger equation. @ignore @c the Koha project appears to satisfy this need. see www.koha.org @c toby 2002-06-21 @item Software to replace card catalogs in libraries. @end ignore @item A simulator for heating and air conditioning systems for buildings. @ignore @c Pat Deegan @email{pat@@psychogenic.com} is working on this. @c no URL yet, the status is updated in @file{volunteers} @item A program for voting and tabulating election results. @end ignore @ignore @c at least 4 GPL program exist for this purpose (one of @c which, gramps, has a GNOME UI): @c http://www.gnu.org/search/fsd-search.py?q=geneology @c 2002-06-27 toby @item A package for editing genealogical records conveniently. This could perhaps be done as a Gnome program, or perhaps as an Emacs extension. @end ignore @ignore @c ToutDoux aims to do this. @c also Minkowsky (at least simple project management) - toby @item A project-scheduling package that accepts a list of project sub-tasks with their interdependencies, and generates Gantt charts and Pert charts and all the other standard project progress reports. @end ignore @item Grammar and style checking programs. @item A diagnostic program to test a hard disk. @item Optical character recognition programs; especially if suitable for scanning documents with multiple fonts and capturing font info as well as character codes. Work is being done on this, but more help is needed. @c Some of the OCR work being done: @c Luis Cearra , http://lem.eui.upm.es/ocre.html @c The status of these projects is updated in @file{/gd/gnuorg/volunteers} @item A program to scan a line drawing and convert it to editable Postscript, or some other editable format. @item A program to recognize handwriting (we don't believe PocketLinux's handwriting capability is ready for non-PocketLinux environments, yet). @item A program that can translate from one natural language, into another. For example, a program to translate French into English. @item CAD software, such as a vague imitation of Autocad. @item A program to receive data from a serial-line tap to facilitate the reverse-engineering of communication protocols. @item A database program designed to store and retrieve patent information. @item A free software package to run on a Palm Pilot in place of its usual software, doing more or less the usual jobs. (Linux, the kernel, has apparently been ported, but according to what we hear this port is not useful yet.) @end itemize @node Languages, Education, Other Projects, Top @chapter Programming Languages Volunteers are needed to write parsers/front ends for languages such as Algol 60, Algol 68, PL/I, Cobol, Fortran 90, Delphi, Modula 2, Modula 3, RPG, and any other languages designed for compilation, to be used with the code generation phases of the GNU C compiler. @ignore @c Fortran status is here so gnu@gnu.org and the volunteer coordinators @c don't have to answer the question -len @c as of 2002-09 this doesn't work anymore - toby You can get the status of the Fortran front end with this command: @example finger -l fortran@@gnu.org @end example @end ignore We would like to have translators from various languages into Scheme. These languages include TCL, Python, Perl, Java, Javascript, and Rexx. Perhaps Clipper as well. @node Education, Games and Recreations, Languages, Top @chapter Education Programs for studying, teaching or doing administrative tasks in schools. See @uref{http://www.gnu.org/education/} for additional information. @itemize @bullet @item A program to organize automatically the schedule of a school given constraints about teachers, rooms, times, and students. @item A program to edit dance notation (such as labanotation) and display dancers moving on the screen. Gepetto does some of this work. Contact @email{gvc@@gnu.org} if you are interested in helping finish the job. @end itemize @node Games and Recreations, , Education, Top @chapter Games and Recreations Video-oriented games that work with the X window system. @itemize @bullet @item Empire (there is a free version but it needs upgrading) @item An ``empire builder'' system that makes it easy to write various kinds of simulation games. @item Improve GnuGo @uref{http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/gnugo.html}. @item Network servers and clients for board and card games for which such software does not yet exist. @item A Hierarchical Task Network package which can be used to program play the computer's side in various strategic games. @item A game like Mill/Nine Men's Morris. @item A realistic train-driving simulator. @item Write imitations of some popular video games: @itemize - @item Space war, Asteroids, Pong, Columns. @item Defending cities from missiles. @item Plane shoots at lots of other planes, tanks, etc. @item Wizard fights fanciful monsters. @ignore Peter Sundling peter.sundling@telia.com expressed interest in this. @item A golf game. @ignore Being done by jhall1@isd.net @item Program a robot by sticking building blocks together, then watch it explore a world. @end ignore @item Biomorph evolution (as in Scientific American and @cite{The Blind Watchmaker}). @end itemize @end itemize We do not need @code{rogue}, as we have @code{hack}. @bye @c LocalWords: dir texi lastupdate uref http www org html helpgnu ifinfo ftp @c LocalWords: dvi hurd toc gvc URL GTK XmHTML xs nl ripley NT com gettext Qt @c LocalWords: GUI libstdc Docbook SGML libc sed STL Gforth GNUstep TCSH Perl @c LocalWords: Ghostscript PIC GCC Texinfo grep dc bc ethernet GDB IP CIFS CU @c LocalWords: SMB SVGA Khoros Automake OpenStep diff roff Smail tron veritas @c LocalWords: cxref ctrace API LilyPond xephem labanotation LessTif outliner @c LocalWords: Hypercard morphing SeeMe ICQ Diffie Helman RSA SSLv TLSv GPL @c LocalWords: OpenBIOS BIOS LILO dbase dbased Harbour harbour WYSIWYG ISBN @c LocalWords: TruePrint Baecker siff sif cs arizona edu TR ps mt sulaco MP @c LocalWords: RTSP MPEG jasonw ariel ucs unimelb AU stutz dsl TCL Javascript @c LocalWords: Rexx GnuGo jhall isd Biomorph regexp eval gd gnuorg Local variables: eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp) time-stamp-start: "@set lastupdate " time-stamp-end: "$" time-stamp-format: "%:b %:d, %:y" compile-command: "make just-tasks" End: @ignore arch-tag: 7ed10085-fa7c-47d4-9ed5-39e885603e5c @end ignore