From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: What is the most useful potential feature which Emacs lacks? Date: Thu, 14 May 2020 23:16:49 -0400 Message-ID: References: <87k11htj96.fsf@dustycloud.org> <87pnb7u70r.fsf@red-bean.com> <87y2pvrzho.fsf@dustycloud.org> <87y2pvqhuj.fsf@red-bean.com> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="68214"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: cwebber@dustycloud.org, ndame@protonmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Karl Fogel Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri May 15 05:17:53 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jZQrA-000Hcp-EM for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 15 May 2020 05:17:52 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33444 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jZQr9-0005rX-F3 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 14 May 2020 23:17:51 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:45636) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jZQqA-0004VA-Pp for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 14 May 2020 23:16:50 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:49309) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jZQqA-0006z0-AH; Thu, 14 May 2020 23:16:50 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jZQq9-0007tZ-FW; Thu, 14 May 2020 23:16:49 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87y2pvqhuj.fsf@red-bean.com> (message from Karl Fogel on Wed, 13 May 2020 23:08:04 -0500) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:250315 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > User does `C-x C-f' to find a file, but they hit Return at the > wrong moment while typing the file path, causing a Dired buffer > comes up visiting the file's directory. The user is, of course, > totally baffled by this result. And yet it's obvious why this is > a good default behavior for `find-file' -- for people who > understand what's going on. This is a useful observation. How can we arrange to inform users about this at the right time? One idea: the first time a user tries to specify a directory in find-file, display a help screen to explain what that means, and describe a few usual ways out. Do you think this would ameliorate the problem? Any other ideas? > If we just say "Emacs should be easier for newcomers to learn", > that's not a useful rallying cry IMHO. I think it can have a practical benefit -- if it motivates people to observe beginners' stumbling blocks as you have done, and then to study how to help beginners cope with them. What other frequent points of confusion have you observed? It could be useful to make a list of those, and we could try to work on each of them over time. > If we say instead "Emacs should try to attract newcomers who have > a higher-than-average probability of becoming high-investment > users, and should explain early on to those newcomers what the > road ahead looks like" We should do that, but not by exaggerating. -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)