Re: Friendlier dired experience [CODE INCLUDED]

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

On Wed, Nov 04 2020, Boruch Baum wrote:
> The usage instructions for diredc are pretty short, so try reading them.
> That's what they're for, and if they're unclear I'll be happy to edit
> them for clarity and simplicity. If you did read them once, it's obvious
> that either they weren't clearly written or you weren't paying attention.

Perhaps your presentation is confusing. When I read your original message and
the README.md, I got the impression that diredc is an extension of dired, which
implies that you can do everything you're used to in dired in the same way it's
done in dired, and that diredc adds new functionality.

However, the way you describe it now it sounds more like diredc is essentially a
different file manager that just happens to use dired under the hood. In that
case, it would help to present it that way, so that a user knows they have to
forget their dired habits.

If it's the former, it might be a good idea to consider whether you need an extra
command, or whether calling `M-x dired` would automatically activate the extra
functionality. If it's the latter, perhaps a name that doesn't include `dired`
would make sense?

Of course it's possible that you think of diredc one way, while someone else
sees it another way. Doesn't make things easier, of course...

Mind you, I hardly ever use dired (I occasionally do some bulk renaming with it,
but otherwise I do most of my file managing in a shell), so take my comments
with a big bag of salt.

> The video shows that you eventually figured out that after performing
> M-x package-install-from-buffer, you need to take the extra step of
> loading the library (you didn't want to follow my simpler instructions
> to just evaluate the buffer, but that's cool; emacs is all about choices).

An autoload cookie on `diredc` might solve that. (At least, I assume that
installing a package from a buffer will install the autoload cookies in it...)



-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments