Update TODOs.

diff --git a/TODO b/TODO
index bdfbdc4146db729832ca5f4c03023c153d486a99..8c0baa490dbce6635a11a1aee3e967a6159d374a 100644 (file)
--- a/TODO
+++ b/TODO
@@ -1,6 +1,16 @@
-TODOs live in the TODO section of doc/file.man (i.e. file(1)). They
-are more visible there, so please add any further TODOs to that file,
-not here.
+Most TODOs live in the TODO section of doc/file.man (i.e. file(1)).
+They are more visible there, so please add any further TODOs to that
+file, not here. More speculative material can live here.
 
 (This change was made when Reuben Thomas noticed that all the bugs
 listed in the BUGS section of the man page had been fixed!)
+
+---
+
+It would be nice to simplify file considerably. For example,
+reimplement the apprentice and non-pattern magic methods in Python,
+and compile the magic patterns to a giant regex (or something similar)
+so that only a small amount of C is needed (because fast execution is
+typically only required for soft magic, not the more detailed
+information given by hard-wired routines). In this regard, note that
+hplip, which is BSD-licensed, has a magic reimplementation in Python.

diff --git a/doc/file.man b/doc/file.man
index 60af973c2d98b19436c6be39791fd070ea176d59..0a8c7855223fad1f8a77a83494b632c54a89441e 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/file.man
+++ b/doc/file.man
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.\" $File: file.man,v 1.97 2011/10/17 20:18:05 christos Exp $
+.\" $File: file.man,v 1.98 2011/12/08 12:12:46 rrt Exp $
 .Dd October 17, 2011
 .Dt FILE __CSECTION__
 .Os
@@ -570,6 +570,11 @@ Add a zip library so we can peek inside Office2007 documents to
 figure out what they are.
 .Pp
 Add an option to print URLs for the sources of the file descriptions.
+.Pp
+Combine script searches and add a way to map executable names to MIME
+types (e.g. have a magic value for !:mime which causes the resulting
+string to be looked up in a table). This would avoid adding the same
+magic repeatedly for each new hash-bang interpreter.
 .Sh AVAILABILITY
 You can obtain the original author's latest version by anonymous FTP
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