wget/TODO

                                 Hey Emacs, this is -*- outline -*- mode

This is the to-do list for Wget.  There is no timetable of when we
plan to implement these features -- this is just a list of features
we'd like to see in Wget, as well as a list of problems that need
fixing.  Patches to implement these items are likely to be accepted.
The items are not listed in any particular order (except that
recently-added items may tend towards the top).  Not all of these
represent user-visible changes.

* Currently Wget mirrors remote FTP permissions whenever it retrieves
  the directory listing.  This is undesirable for most users, as
  permissions like "664" are frequently used on the servers, which
  might not be what the user wants.  Wget should be changed not to
  mirror remote FTP permissions by default.  There should be a new
  option add an option that enables this back on.

* Implement a `--disable-dns-cache' option that disables DNS caching.
  It is trivial to implement; simply avoid calling cache_host_lookup
  at the end of lookup_host.

* Honor `Content-Disposition: XXX; filename="FILE"' when creating the
  file name.

* Should allow retries with multiple downloads when using -O on
  regular files.  As the source comment says: "A possible solution to
  [rewind not working with multiple downloads] would be to remember
  the file position in the output document and to seek to that
  position, instead of rewinding."

* Wget shouldn't delete rejected files that were not downloaded, but
  just found on disk because of `-nc'.  For example, `wget -r -nc
  -A.gif URL' should allow the user to get all the GIFs without
  removing any of the existing HTML files.

* Be careful not to lose username/password information given for the
  URL on the command line.

* Add a --range parameter allowing you to explicitly specify a range of bytes to
  get from a file over HTTP (FTP only supports ranges ending at the end of the
  file, though forcibly disconnecting from the server at the desired endpoint
  might be workable).

* If multiple FTP URLs are specified that are on the same host, Wget should
  re-use the connection rather than opening a new one for each file.

* Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
  the user for one.

* If -c used with -N, check to make sure a file hasn't changed on the server
  before "continuing" to download it (preventing a bogus hybrid file).

* Generalize --html-extension to something like --mime-extensions and have it
  look at mime.types/mimecap file for preferred extension.  Non-HTML files with
  filenames changed this way would be re-downloaded each time despite -N unless
  .orig files were saved for them.  Since .orig would contain the same data as
  non-.orig, the latter could be just a link to the former.  Another possibility
  would be to implement a per-directory database called something like
  .wget_url_mapping containing URLs and their corresponding filenames.

* When spanning hosts, there's no way to say that you are only interested in
  files in a certain directory on _one_ of the hosts (-I and -X apply to all).
  Perhaps -I and -X should take an optional hostname before the directory?

* Add an option to not encode special characters like ' ' and '~' when saving
  local files.  Would be good to have a mode that encodes all special characters
  (as now), one that encodes none (as above), and one that only encodes a
  character if it was encoded in the original URL (e.g. %20 but not %7E).

* --retr-symlinks should cause wget to traverse links to directories too.

* Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.

* Make -K compare X.orig to X and move the former on top of the latter if 
  they're the same, rather than leaving identical .orig files laying around.

* Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links 
  to them in newly-downloaded documents.

* Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).

* Introduce a concept of "boolean" options.  For instance, every
  boolean option `--foo' would have a `--no-foo' equivalent for
  turning it off.  Get rid of `--foo=no' stuff.  Short options would
  be handled as `-x' vs. `-nx'.

* Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.

* Add case-insensitivity as an option.

* Handle MIME types correctly.  There should be an option to (not)
  retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.

* Implement "persistent" retrieving.  In "persistent" mode Wget should
  treat most of the errors as transient.

* Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.

* Allow size limit to files (perhaps with an option to download oversize files 
  up through the limit or not at all, to get more functionality than [u]limit.

* Download to .in* when mirroring.

* Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.

* Implement uploading (--upload URL?) in FTP and HTTP.

* Rewrite FTP code to allow for easy addition of new commands.  It
  should probably be coded as a simple DFA engine.

* Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.

* Implement better spider options.

* Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), implementing them in a
  modular fashion.

* Implement a concept of "packages" a la mirror.

* Add a "rollback" option to have continued retrieval throw away a
  configurable number of bytes at the end of a file before resuming
  download.  Apparently, some stupid proxies insert a "transfer
  interrupted" string we need to get rid of.

* When using --accept and --reject, you can end up with empty directories.  Have
  Wget any such at the end.