1 Hey Emacs, this is -*- outline -*- mode
3 This is the to-do list for Wget. There is no timetable of when we plan to
4 implement these features -- this is just a list of things it'd be nice to see in
5 Wget. Patches to implement any of these items would be gladly accepted. The
6 items are not listed in any particular order (except that recently-added items
7 may tend towards the top). Not all of these represent user-visible
10 * -p should probably go "_two_ more hops" on <FRAMESET> pages.
12 * Only normal link-following recursion should respect -np. Page-requisite
13 recursion should not. When -np -p is specified, Wget should still retrieve
14 requisite images and such on the server, even if they aren't in that directory
15 or a subdirectory of it. Likewise, -H -np -p should retrieve requisite files
18 * Add a --range parameter allowing you to explicitly specify a range of bytes to
19 get from a file over HTTP (FTP only supports ranges ending at the end of the
20 file, though forcibly disconnecting from the server at the desired endpoint
23 * RFC 1738 says that if logging on to an FTP server puts you in a directory
24 other than '/', the way to specify a file relative to '/' in a URL (let's use
25 "/bin/ls" in this example) is "ftp://host/%2Fbin/ls". Wget needs to support
26 this (and ideally not consider "ftp://host//bin/ls" to be equivalent, as that
27 would equate to the command "CWD " rather than "CWD /"). To accomodate people
28 used to broken FTP clients like Internet Explorer and Netscape, if
29 "ftp://host/bin/ls" doesn't exist, Wget should try again (perhaps under
30 control of an option), acting as if the user had typed "ftp://host/%2Fbin/ls".
32 * If multiple FTP URLs are specified that are on the same host, Wget should
33 re-use the connection rather than opening a new one for each file.
35 * Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
38 * Limit the number of successive redirection to max. 20 or so.
40 * If -c used on a file that's already completely downloaded, don't re-download
41 it (unless normal --timestamping processing would cause you to do so).
43 * If -c used with -N, check to make sure a file hasn't changed on the server
44 before "continuing" to download it (preventing a bogus hybrid file).
47 <http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots-rfc.html>
48 and support the new directives.
50 * Generalize --html-extension to something like --mime-extensions and have it
51 look at mime.types/mimecap file for preferred extension. Non-HTML files with
52 filenames changed this way would be re-downloaded each time despite -N unless
53 .orig files were saved for them. Since .orig would contain the same data as
54 non-.orig, the latter could be just a link to the former. Another possibility
55 would be to implement a per-directory database called something like
56 .wget_url_mapping containing URLs and their corresponding filenames.
58 * When spanning hosts, there's no way to say that you are only interested in
59 files in a certain directory on _one_ of the hosts (-I and -X apply to all).
60 Perhaps -I and -X should take an optional hostname before the directory?
62 * Add an option to not encode special characters like ' ' and '~' when saving
63 local files. Would be good to have a mode that encodes all special characters
64 (as now), one that encodes none (as above), and one that only encodes a
65 character if it was encoded in the original URL (e.g. %20 but not %7E).
67 * --retr-symlinks should cause wget to traverse links to directories too.
69 * Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.
71 * Make -K compare X.orig to X and move the former on top of the latter if
72 they're the same, rather than leaving identical .orig files laying around.
74 * If CGI output is saved to a file, e.g. cow.cgi?param, -k needs to change the
75 '?' to a "%3F" in links to that file to avoid passing part of the filename as
78 * Make `-k' convert <base href=...> too.
80 * Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links
81 to them in newly-downloaded documents.
83 * Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
85 * Introduce a concept of "boolean" options. For instance, every
86 boolean option `--foo' would have a `--no-foo' equivalent for
87 turning it off. Get rid of `--foo=no' stuff. Short options would
88 be handled as `-x' vs. `-nx'.
90 * Implement "thermometer" display (not all that hard; use an
91 alternative show_progress() if the output goes to a terminal.)
93 * Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.
95 * Add case-insensitivity as an option.
97 * Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
98 retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
100 * Implement "persistent" retrieving. In "persistent" mode Wget should
101 treat most of the errors as transient.
103 * Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.
105 * Fix Unix directory parser to allow for spaces in file names.
107 * Allow size limit to files (perhaps with an option to download oversize files
108 up through the limit or not at all, to get more functionality than [u]limit.
110 * Implement breadth-first retrieval.
112 * Download to .in* when mirroring.
114 * Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.
116 * Implement a switch to avoid downloading multiple files (e.g. x and x.gz).
118 * Implement uploading (--upload URL?) in FTP and HTTP.
120 * Rewrite FTP code to allow for easy addition of new commands. It
121 should probably be coded as a simple DFA engine.
123 * Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
125 * Implement better spider options.
127 * Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), implementing them in a
130 * Implement a concept of "packages" a la mirror.
132 * Implement correct RFC1808 URL parsing.
134 * Implement HTTP cookies.
136 * Implement more HTTP/1.1 bells and whistles (ETag, Content-MD5 etc.)
138 * Add a "rollback" option to have --continue throw away a configurable number of
139 bytes at the end of a file before resuming download. Apparently, some stupid
140 proxies insert a "transfer interrupted" string we need to get rid of.
142 * When using --accept and --reject, you can end up with empty directories. Have
143 Wget any such at the end.