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Hey Emacs, this is -*- outline -*- mode
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This is the to-do list for GNU Wget. There is no timetable of when we
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plan to implement these features -- this is just a list of features
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we'd like to see in Wget, as well as a list of problems that need
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fixing. Patches to implement these items are likely to be accepted,
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especially if they follow the coding convention outlined in PATCHES
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and if they patch the documentation as well.
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The items are not listed in any particular order (except that
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recently-added items may tend towards the top). Not all of these
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represent user-visible changes.
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* Currently Wget mirrors remote FTP permissions whenever it retrieves
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the directory listing. This is undesirable for most users, as
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permissions like "664" are frequently used on the servers, which
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might not be what the user wants. Wget should be changed not to
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mirror remote FTP permissions by default. There should be a new
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option add an option that enables this back on.
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* Honor `Content-Disposition: XXX; filename="FILE"' when creating the
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file name. If possible, try not to break `-nc' and friends when
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* Should allow retries with multiple downloads when using -O on
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regular files. As the source comment says: "A possible solution to
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[rewind not working with multiple downloads] would be to remember
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the file position in the output document and to seek to that
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position, instead of rewinding."
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But the above won't work for -O/dev/stdout, when stdout is a pipe.
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An even better solution would be to simply keep writing to the same
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file descriptor each time, instead of reopening it in append mode.
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* Wget shouldn't delete rejected files that were not downloaded, but
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just found on disk because of `-nc'. For example, `wget -r -nc
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-A.gif URL' should allow the user to get all the GIFs without
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removing any of the existing HTML files.
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* Be careful not to lose username/password information given for the
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URL on the command line.
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* Add a --range parameter allowing you to explicitly specify a range
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of bytes to get from a file over HTTP (FTP only supports ranges
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ending at the end of the file, though forcibly disconnecting from
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the server at the desired endpoint might be workable).
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* If multiple FTP URLs are specified that are on the same host, Wget should
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re-use the connection rather than opening a new one for each file.
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* Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
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* If -c used with -N, check to make sure a file hasn't changed on the server
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before "continuing" to download it (preventing a bogus hybrid file).
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* Generalize --html-extension to something like --mime-extensions and
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have it look at mime.types/mimecap file for preferred extension.
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Non-HTML files with filenames changed this way would be
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re-downloaded each time despite -N unless .orig files were saved for
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them. Since .orig would contain the same data as non-.orig, the
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latter could be just a link to the former. Another possibility
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would be to implement a per-directory database called something like
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.wget_url_mapping containing URLs and their corresponding filenames.
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* When spanning hosts, there's no way to say that you are only interested in
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files in a certain directory on _one_ of the hosts (-I and -X apply to all).
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Perhaps -I and -X should take an optional hostname before the directory?
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* --retr-symlinks should cause wget to traverse links to directories too.
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* Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.
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* Make -K compare X.orig to X and move the former on top of the latter if
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they're the same, rather than leaving identical .orig files laying around.
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* Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links
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to them in newly-downloaded documents.
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* Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
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* Introduce real "boolean" options. Every `--foo' setting should have
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a corresponding `--no-foo' that turns off. This is useful even for
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options turned off by default, because the default can be reversed
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in `.wgetrc'. Get rid of `--foo=no'. Short options would be
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handled as `-x' vs. `-nx'.
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* Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.
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* Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
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retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
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* Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.
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* Allow size limit to files (perhaps with an option to download oversize files
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up through the limit or not at all, to get more functionality than [u]limit.
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* Download to .in* when mirroring.
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* Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.
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* Implement uploading (--upload URL?) in FTP and HTTP.
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* Rewrite FTP code to allow for easy addition of new commands. It
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should probably be coded as a simple DFA engine.
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* Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
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* Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), implementing them in a
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* Add a "rollback" option to have continued retrieval throw away a
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configurable number of bytes at the end of a file before resuming
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download. Apparently, some stupid proxies insert a "transfer
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interrupted" string we need to get rid of.
added
removed
TODO
