GNU Task List
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This file is updated automatically from tasks.texi, which was last updated on September 15, 1998.

About the GNU Task List
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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 /pub/gnu/tasks/.  The task list is available there in several different formats: tasks.text, tasks.texi, tasks.info, and tasks.dvi.  The GNU HURD task list is also there in file tasks.hurd. The task list is also available on the GNU World Wide Web server: http://www.gnu.org/prep/tasks_toc.html.

If you start working steadily on a project, please let 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.

Highest Priority
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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.

  * If you are good at writing documentation, please do that.

  * 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 http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html, and then get a copy of the latest HURD task list from:

       * http://www.gnu.org/prep/tasks.hurd.html, via the World Wide Web.

       * ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/tasks/tasks.hurd, via anonymous FTP.

       * gnu@gnu.org via e-mail.

  * If you are a Scheme fan, you can help develop Guile.  Please have a look at the URL http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html and then contact the Guile developers at guile@gnu.org.

  * Help develop XmHTML.

  * Help develop software to emulate Windows NT on top of GNU systems. For example, you could help work on Willows Twin.

  * Implement the Kermit data transfer protocol.  (See below.)

  * Develop a free replacement for a semi-free program such as Xv or POV. These semi-free programs are less restricted than typical proprietary programs, but too restricted to be part of any free operating system.

  * 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.

Documentation
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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, because we are not free to copy and modify them along with the software they document.  For this reason, we do not recommend any non-free manuals.

  * A C reference manual.  (RMS made a try at one, which you could start with).

  * Reference manuals for C++, Pascal, Fortran 77, and Java.

  * A manual for Ghostscript.

  * A manual for TCSH.

  * A good free reference manual for Perl.  The free Perl on-line reference documentation is good, for what it is--a list of functions and a description of each--but that is not the same as a reference manual. (Compare, for example, the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual with the collection of documentation strings of Emacs Lisp functions.)

  * 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.

  * A manual for PIC (the graphics formatting language).

  * A book on how GCC works and why various machine descriptions are written as they are.

  * A manual for programming X-window applications.

  * Manuals for various X window managers.

  * Reference cards for those manuals that don't have them: C Compiler, Make, Texinfo, Termcap, and maybe the C Library.

  * Many utilities need documentation, including grep and others.

Unix-Related Projects
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  * An improved version of the POSIX utility pax.  There is one on Usenet, but it is said to be poorly written.  Talk with thomas@gnu.org, pinard@iro.umontreal.ca and juo@klinzhai.rutgers.edu for advice about this project.

  * A grap preprocessor program for troff.

  * Less urgent: make a replacement for the ``writer's workbench'' program style, or something to do the same kind of job.  Compatibility with Unix is not especially important for this programs.

Kernel-Related Projects
***********************

  * 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.

  * A shared memory X11 server to run under MACH is very desirable.  The machine specific parts should be kept well separated.

  * An implementation of CIFS, the ``Common Internet File System,'' for the HURD.  This protocol is an offshoot of SMB.

Extensions to Existing GNU Software
***********************************

  * Enhance GCC.  See files PROJECTS and PROBLEMS in the GCC distribution.

  * 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.

  * Extend Octave to support programs that were written to run on Khoros.

  * Rewrite Automake and Deja-GNU in Scheme, so they can run in Guile. Right now they are written in Perl and TCL, respectively.  There are also other programs, not terribly long, which we would also like to have rewritten in Scheme.

     Deja-GNU uses TCL via Expect.  It may be easy to adapt Expect to work with Scheme instead of TCL.

  * Finish the partially-implemented C interpreter project.

  * Help with the development of GNUstep, a GNU implementation of the OpenStep specification.

  * 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.

  * Add a few features to GNU diff, such as handling large input files without reading entire files into core.

  * An nroff macro package to simplify texi2roff.

  * An implementation of XML (see http://www.w3.org/XML/).

  * 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 tron@veritas.com about this.

     Smail also needs a new chief maintainer.

  * Enhanced cross-reference browsing tools.  (We now have something at about the level of cxref.)  We also could use something like ctrace.  (Some people are now working on this project.)

X Windows Projects
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  * An emulator for Macintosh graphics calls on top of X Windows.

  * A music playing and editing system.  This should work with LilyPond, a GNU program for music typesetting.

  * An ephemeris program to replace xephem (which is, alas, too restricted to qualify as free software).

  * A program to edit dance notation (such as labanotation) and display dancers moving on the screen.

  * Make sure the Vibrant toolkit works with LessTif instead of Motif.

  * A program to display and edit Hypercard stacks.

  * A program for graphic morphing of scanned photographs.

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.

  * A free library for public-key encryption.

     This library should use the Diffie-Helman algorithm for public key encryption, not the RSA algorithm, because the Diffie-Helman patent in the US expired in 1997.  This library can probably be developed from the code for the GNU Privacy Guard (now in development).

  * A free secure telnet program more or less like ssh/sshd.  Since this requires a public key encryption algorithm, it should be based on the library above.

     This program should follow the draft standard for ssh.  As always, it cannot implement the RSA algorithm, but must instead support the alternatives that will be patent-free in late 1997.  It cannot support IDEA, but can use triple-DES and/or Blowfish or other non-patented alternatives.

  * Free software for doing secure commercial transactions on the web. This too needs public key encryption.

A free replacement for PGP is no longer listed here because the GNU Privacy Guard will do that job.

Other Projects
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If you think of others that should be added, please send them to gnu@gnu.org.

  * A program to reformat HTML source to make it easier to read as HTML.

  * 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.

  * A free program that can transfer files on a serial line using the same protocol that Kermit uses.

  * An imitation of Page Maker or Ventura Publisher.

  * An imitation of dbase2 or dbase3 (How dbased!)

  * A general ledger program, including support for accounts payable, account receivables, payroll, inventory control, order processing, etc.

  * A teleconferencing program which does the job of CU-SeeMe (which is, alas, not free software).

  * A free replacement for Glimpse, which is not free software.

  * 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,

          Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs,
          Ronald M. Baecker and Aaron Marcus,
          Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10745-7

     But you don't have to do exactly what they propose.

  * High-quality music compression software. (Talk with phr@netcom.com for relevant suggestions.)

  * A program to play sound distributed in ``Real Audio'' format.

  * A program to generate ``Real Audio'' format from audio input.

  * Programs to handle audio in RTSP format.

  * Speech-generation programs (there is a program from Brown U that you could improve).

  * Speech-recognition programs (single-speaker, disconnected speech is sufficient).

  * More scientific mathematical subroutines. (A clone of SPSS is being written already.)

  * Statistical tools.

  * A scientific data collection and processing tool, perhaps something like Scientific Workbench and/or Khoros,

  * Software to replace card catalogues in libraries.

  * 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.

  * Grammar and style checking programs.

  * A translator from Scheme to C.

  * A fast emulator for the i386 which works by translating machine instructions into the machine language of the host machine. (Support for emulation of other machines would enhance the program but might make it much more difficult.)

  * A map display or geographic information system.

  * 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.

  * A program to scan a line drawing and convert it to Postscript.

  * A program to recognize handwriting.

  * A pen based interface.

  * CAD software, such as a vague imitation of Autocad.

  * A program to receive data from a serial-line tap to facilitate the reverse-engineering of communication protocols.

Compilers for Other Batch Languages
***********************************

Volunteers are needed to write parsers/front ends for languages such as Algol 60, Algol 68, PL/I, Cobol, Fortran 90, or whatever, to be used with the code generation phases of the GNU C compiler.

You can get the status of the Fortran front end with this command:

     finger -l fortran@gnu.org

Games and Recreations
*********************

Video-oriented games that work with the X window system.

  * Empire (there is a free version but it needs upgrading)

  * An ``empire builder'' system that makes it easy to write various kinds of simulation games.

  * Improve GnuGo, which is not yet very sophisticated.

  * A Hierarchical Task Network package which can be used to program play the computer's side in various strategic games.

  * Write imitations of some popular video games:

       - Space war, Asteroids, Pong, Columns.

       - Defending cities from missiles.

       - Plane shoots at lots of other planes, tanks, etc.

       - Wizard fights fanciful monsters.

       - A golf game.

       - Biomorph evolution (as in Scientific American and The Blind Watchmaker).

       - A program to display effects of moving at relativistic speeds.

We do not need rogue, as we have hack.