The old Future TODO list

This is what we plan to do in future versions of FreeGuide. To see what we are doing now, check out the current TODO list.

Time flows downwards in this document

Free Java

 - Look into packaging as binaries on Windows and Linux.
 - Test with a Java 1.4 runtime
 - Look into the compile warning we get in src/freeguide/plugins/program/freeguide/FreeGuide.java

Features

 - Notice "Please run --configure" in the command output, cancel downloading
   and launch "Choose channels".

Power favourites

 - Integrate Favourites, List view and Search?
 - Favourites match on sub-title
 - Favourites match on description
 - Favourites define display colour
 - Favourites match on whether or not a programme is a repeat.
 - Favourites match on movie
 - Favourites match on category
 - Remember last hit-time of favourites
 - Allow sorting of favourites list on name, hit-time and filter by category
 - Maintenance
   - Make sure any new XMLTV grabbers such as Croatia (tv_grab_hr)
     are supported by Freeguide
   - "Add new XMLTV grabber" config boxes should be labeled and provide examples
     of what to type

Harder bugs and small features

 - Fix the "Search fails if more than 7 days' listings downloaded" bug reported by Jim Pera here: http://www.nabble.com/bug-in-freeguide-tf4040989.html
 - Bugs we have seen but need to replicate:
   - From the first time wizard (on win2k), I chose to run config, and then
     chose to download listings.  The window disappeared completely.
   - Configuration didn't seem to work during first time wizard - why?
   - Sometimes my XMLTV grabber gets deleted, and XMLTV is unchecked in
     the grabbers section in Options
 - Select programmes and channels for export and print:
   - by channels(all/one/channelset)
   - by date(all/today or selected/from-to)
   - by selection(all/only selected)
 - Add pack(.gz) option for export
 - Change xmltv setup to support XmltvCapabilities and XMLTV::Ask
 - Change plugin/ui/horizontal to show site information(like "NTV, VseTV" instead "NTV")
 - Get Andy's friend Mattias to do a Swedish translation
 - Get Andy's friend Azam to do an Indonesian translation
 - Get Andy's friend Pete to do an Afrikaans translation
 - Fix double byte to single byte character conversion issues (o-acute is replaced by
   2 characters) see [http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A--Freeguide-tv-beta-testing--FreeGuide-0.10.4-Release-Candidate-Testing-tf2022627.html#a5561257 this thread]
 - Allow changing the font in the programme description panel and the personalised guide
 - On Windows install, handle problems with the command line being too long to
   fit into a shortcut.
 - Remember "Show details" setting, and don't close download window if details
   are being shown.
 - Fix bug with multiple reminders if you enter a page multiple times.
 - Fix the problem reported by Russell Odom on 24/09/04 to do with the channel
   list not staying up to date when you reconfigure.
 - Fix the old channels hanging around bug - see Yann's email of 15/11/04
 - Fix the bug with a favourite that matches everything appearing - see my email
   of 2005-01-05.
 - Fix bad characters being displayed in Tk GUI of XMLTV (entering username).
 - Fix Go to now at 4am going to yesterday
 - When you enter the Options screen the tree view should be expanded already
 - Redesign the Options screen to make it simpler and more task-focussed
     - Can we get rid of a lot of options for the horizontal display?
 - Increase the sizes of buttons in Channel Sets, Options and First Time Wizard
   so that they fit under the German translation.
 - Make _pt use tv_unprocessed method like uk_rt
 - Fix bug where vertical scrolling makes the cursor disappear
 - Fix cropped channel icons in program details panel
 - If a link for a program in the "personalized tv guide" is clicked, the
   program view scrolls to it. It would be also nice if the detail view
   would change to it.
 - after clicking on the "Edit channel sets" item in the channel set
   dropdown, it stays selected. It would be nice if the previous selected
   item would be selected again.
 - Check where each repaint event comes from and make sure it is only called
   once for every time it needs to be called.
 - Make 00:00 starts after time in favourites _either_ late at night _or_ early
   in the morning depending what the starts before time is - see debian bug
   http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=285719
 - Clicking in the personalised listing window jumps the strip view to the
   right time, but not the right programme.
 - Check what happens (if anything?) if you don't set TZ
 - Improve visibility of the fact that the downloading is still going on when
   you've clicked the X in the downloading window.
 - Don't scroll left or right when you press the up or down button to navigate
   between programmes (unless the programme you have not selected is entirely off
   the screen)
 - Make channel labels wide enough to fit channel name and icon.
 - Make a "Change Channels" button that links through to change the settings of
   the grabber(s) you are using.
 - Report e.g. parsing errors during download to the Show Details panel
 - Make the XMLTV plugin optionally save out the raw XML it downloaded for debug.
 - Supply a default config file for each XMLTV grabber so that you get something
   even if config didn't work.
 - Create an ant build target that makes a "run" directory that contains all the
   jar files needed etc to run freeguide (and preferably puts a little
   "freeguide" script in there to run it using the correct directories)
 - Move "First Time Wizard" and "Plugins manager" _inside_ the Options screen.
 - Sometimes when I build FreeGuide from clean and then immediately start it I
   get a Segmentation fault
 - Movies are not shown in the movie colour
 - Make sure the plugin repository really works
 - Get rid of the "user andy" messages when installing RPMs.
 - Add an FAQ about downloading more than a week's listings.
 - Make the choose font dialog bigger. 
 - Make middle-click work the same as double-click on a programme.
 - Add an "Edit this favourite" option to the right-click menu on a favourite.
 - Show original air date in tool tips.
 - Fix themeing so the theme is chosen on startup:
   http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=14558299
 - Add an FAQ on how to run XMLTV from the command line
 - Explain what each mailing list is for, and give priority to the
   developers' and users' lists since they are normally what people want.
 - Command-line switch to provide a fixed time offset.
 - Modify the Grabbers node on the Options screen.  Currently it looks
   like this (where --- means this node has settings for it):
    * Grabbers ---
      * XMLTV ---
      * VSetV.com ---
      * ... ---
   but this is confusing as it is not expected that the Grabbers node
   will have settings.  So we should change it to look like this:
    * Grabbers
      * Grabbers ---
      * XMLTV ---
      * VSetV.com ---
      * ... ---
   or, better, we should put a checkbox on each grabber's page saying
   "Use this grabber", and get rid of the separate page altogether.
   Then it would look like this:
    * Grabbers
      * XMLTV ---+
      * VSetV.com ---+
      * ... ---+
   where the + means each page has a checkbox saying "Use this grabber".
 - Improve performance when there is a large number of manual selections.
 - Identify (and fix?) the word-wrap problem reported by Jim Konowitz on
   Java 1.4.2 vs 1.5.  This:
   http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do;:YfiG?bug_id=4924163
   may be helpful.  It seems to suggest if you call pack() twice it
   might fix the problem.
   - Make sure long tooltips still wrap properly on java 1.5
   - Make sure tooltips clear properly (especially near the horizontal divider)
 - Fix problem with overlapping programmes caused by schedule changes.
 - If an exception is thrown reading a .ser file, delete it.
 - Clean up strange wording in the program details pane if appropriate see [[http://www.nabble.com/Another-FreeGuide-10.4-Issue-tf1989103.html|this thread]]
    - Examples: is "system: xmltv_ns; dd_progid" necessary?
    - "value TV-14" should be "rating TV-14"
    - Episode numbers should NOT be shown as "0/2" instead of "1/2",
      or "1/2" instead of "2/2", etc. (not all multi-episode programs show this bug)

Documentation and accessibility

 - Add command line options to man page
 - Link on the mailing list page to http://www.nabble.com/FreeGuide-TV-Guide-f3677.html
 - Convert the docs back to HTML
 - Add instructions on grabbing Zap2it icons using tv_grab_na_icons to "download & install" docs
 - Reduce gaps between list items in docs
 - Put a full title in the title bar instead of just sub-heading on web site
 - Add notes to FAQ about na_dd subscription expiring and na_dd not entering
   your password during configuration.
 - Add an FAQ about when Java wasn't installed when FreeGuide was installed.
 - Check everything has keyboard shortcuts
 - Add an FAQ about how to change the number of days downloaded.
 - Vertical Viewer refinements
    - Display episode title
    - Add relevant Horizontal Viewer functions such as "Add to guide" & "Add to favourites"
    - When clicking on the Channel header, allow long channel lists to fit on the screen.
      Suggestions include allow scrolling of the channel list or "word wrap" the list into multiple
      columns.
    - Add a Search text box to vertical viewer instead of right-click
    - Make vertical viewer indicate when its listings run from and to
    - Add options like in the search dialog for showing old programmes or
      not etc. 
 - Make it prompt to download if there are old listings, but no current ones.
 - Uncomment and edit the FAQ about adding UK radio channels.
 - Add an FAQ about grabbing from 2 countries.
 - Add an FAQ about XMLTV saying Return code = -325834589 (delete your perlexe cache)

Nice to have features

 - Command-line option to just download listings and exit with no GUI
 - "Revert to Favourites" button to remove all custom markings for today in menu 
 - "Clear" button to unmark everything, including favourites in menu
 - Make the printed and today's guides work using HTML templates that can be edited
   by the user.
 - A default favourite, so when you add a new favourite it comes with preset
   settings.
 - Option to jump to a specific time on program start
 - Go To Now scrolls the personalised listing panel as well as the main panel
 - Make the About box a _lot_ nicer.
 - Show whether a tab has been altered on the Options Dialog
 - Icon to show you can jump to the web site
 - Allow to adjust display time of tooltips
 - Allow to un-choose programmes from Personalised Listing pane
 - Checkbox to stay at now time
 - Change font for "No programme selected" in programme details pane
 - Add icons to UK and US listings
 - http://www.memoire.com/guillaume-desnoix/slaf/
 - Remove text from after channel icons
 - Display programme categories, and allow colours to indicate category.
 - Add firefox to the possible browsers.
 - Double-clicks should move items in the channel set editor
 - Update the time panel every minute or so
 - Single reminder pop-up listing all your reminders, instead of lots of pop-ups
 - Automatically run "Choose channels" if config file does not exist, and take
   it out of the First Time Wizard (Maybe add "Download listings now" to FTW?)
 - Channel names missing when viewing channel sets (Antony Akintewe's email of
   Mar 24 2005)
 - Duplicate a channel set
 - The "All channels" channel set should be ordered by channel number, if
   available.
 - Update screenshots on sf and freshmeat to show latest features
 - Create a standard "icon missing" icon
 - Look into focus/modal bug with About box and reminder: Shaun email 2005-01-06
 - Fix bug with E! icon killing FreeGuide - Jim Konowitz's email of 2005-01-05
 - Complain when the system prefs are not installed because installation went
   wrong.
 - Make tall and thin channel icons wider to line up text
 - Allow resizing fonts in HTML displays
 - Delete all registry entries on Windows uninstall (how to do this?)
 - Make a single reminder window showing a list of all the things you are being
   reminded about
 - Options screen should remember what item we were on and return to it when
   we re-enter.
 - Make links in About screen work.
 - Make proxies work with downloading from Java - take proxy info from
   environment variables if possible, or on command line?
 - Include videoplus info (see Yann's email of 2005-04-22)
 - Sort out how to notice a programme is a movie in various countries
 - Play a sound when a reminder pops up
 - Different colour for programmes whose original air date is not this date
 - Make the progress bar on download either display "I am doing something"-type
   behaviour, or remove it, when it is not relevant (e.g. XMLTV download).
 - Improve search: search on sub-title, description, choose the programme
   when double-clicked

Polish

 - Write a full manual
 - Fix Debian bug #285715 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=285715
 - Automatically make a channel set when you right-click a channel and choose
   "Move up" (or even drag!)

Release 1.0 (the destination)

 - Exciting screen-casts of exciting functionality
 - Many translations
 - Use Java's printing capabilities to print
 - Other platforms - investigate Mac, BSD, others

Preferences creep

 - Ability to save and load preferences (using Java's ability to save to XML)
 - Resolve duplicate programmes in the guide, so it shows both times it's on
 - Terms and conditions of listings
 - Highlight a given channel
 - A grid or "now" line that helps see what time programmes are on (see 
 - Delete some preferences when doing a complete install?
 - Fix bug in Italian grabber GUI config
 - Fix bugs in Windows grabber config for Netherlands, Sweden and Germany
 - Error dialog when there's an XML parsing error.
 - Investigate little squares appearing instead of chars during grabber config
   on Windows (na_dd - timezone screen).
 - Allow selection only of programmes on channels that are currently displayed
 - Fix bug with favourites creating multiple chosen programmes (happens when you
   re-enter a day several times)
 - Personalised guide for the next X days.
 - Brief summary for the next few days.
 - Minimize to system tray - see Christian's email of 14/3/05
 - Option to show channel numbers with channel name

Code cleanliness

- Fix DOCUMENT_ME!s and write all JavaDoc tags

Bigger features

 - Include Python XMLTV grabbers, and all others available
 - Error message on RegExp error in Favourite editor
 - Easy access to different channel ordering - through right-click menu
 - Make downloading work after midnight
 - Make it not say no listings after midnight
 - Save today's choices to xmltv format.
 - Add a "save to html" option
 - Look for the default browser in the Windows registry under:
     KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Default HTML Editor\shell\edit\command
     (actually that looks like the HTML editor, but anyway)
 - Display with programme ratings
 - x-dist icon support in RPM http://www.hyperborea.org/software/dillo/dillo.spec
 - Look into SQL engines: http://www.mckoi.com/database/
 - Remember where you were in the Options screen
 - Optimization
     - Make favorites scan logic better (Ex: if a favorite is limited to one channel, don't scan all
       channels looking for a match)
 - Choose a channel in horizontal view and display only that in vertical view
 - Option to show only favourites in vertical view
 - Search by movie/film star rating
 - Package freeguide inside a JSmooth EXE: http://jsmooth.sourceforge.net/index.php

Wish list (I have no plans to implement, but contributions are welcome)

 - Set up Java webstart version of FreeGuide
 - Package XMLTV using PAR
 - Single channel view
 - Automated bug reporting e.g. when the grabber fails.
 - Alphabetical listing of programmes this week under each category.
 - Views: details only, guide only, both layout 1, both layout 2, neither
 - Make scrollbar increment in fractions of hours on mouse wheel or click.
 - Snap to nearest half hour in timeline on click
 - Support [[http://community.titantv.com/forums/thread/407.aspx|TVPI / TVVI]] guide export format used by some PVRs

On-hold recording release

 - Right-clicking on a programme should give these options:
    Remind me
    Record
    Remind me of every episode
    Record every episode
  The first 2 should just affect this programme, and the second 2
  should create a favourite that is either recorded or not.
  These two types of reminder (Remind me or Record) should be
  added the first time you run FreeGuide.

 - Check that upgrading from an old version properly preserves
   your old favourites, turning them into
   "Remind me of every episode" favourites.

 - Double clicking on a show should do the same as right-clicking
   and saying "Remind me".

 - Fix the fact that FreeGuide seems to record things 1 or 2 minutes
   after you told it to.

 - Save hardware name list, instead of losing it every time

 - Change reminder section on Options screen to look like this:

   - Advanced
     - Recording and reminders
       - Channel names
       - Remind me
       - Record
       - ... user-added reminders ...
    There should be an "Add new reminder" button on BOTH
    the "Recording and reminders" page, AND on every
    reminder page (remind me, record, etc.)

 - The favourites editor should allow you to edit favourites of all
   types, and set which reminder plugin they use (i.e. add to guide
   and pop-up message, or record, or other user-defined ones)

 - Include these recording scripts:
    - mplayer (Linux, written by Andy)
    - VLC (Linux, written by Gerry)
    - A Windows one of some kind?


 - New zap2it grabber not working (XMLTV grabber is fine):
   "Error grab data by grabber 'grabber-zap2it' : Provider
   com.bea.xml.stream.MXParserFactory not found" (Dec 6 nightly)

 - New zap2it grabber needs to allow timezone offset

 - Add %length variable to recording commands that gives the time
   in the hh:mm:ss format, INCLUDING the gap before and after the
   programme.