Re: What is the most useful potential feature which Emacs lacks?

[Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>]

On 28 May 2020, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>>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?
>> My guess is it would ameliorate the problem for some users, and scare off
>> other ones (ones who are less patient, or, put another way, who are less
>> willing to invest time in reading an explanatory screen like that to figure
>> out what just happened).
>
>Maybe we could simply use the "confirm" mechanism.  I.e. don't put any
>explanatory text, but just emit "[confirm]" and wait for a second RET,
>just like we do when `C-x C-f` specifies a non-existing file.

It would only do this the first time a user does `find-file' on a directory?  Or would it be every time?

If it's every time, that punishes experienced users, who do `find-file' on directories deliberately and don't want an extra keystroke to get in the way.

If it's only the first time, then I think it has other disadvantages:

- It doesn't really help the new user know what's going on or what's about to happen.

- It mis-trains them to think that when they do `find-file' on a directory they'll be asked for confirmation, when actually that's only going to happen this one time.  (Or maybe they have to set some variable to get what we currently consider the "normal" behavior?  But that's adding even complexity.)

I admit that I'm basically using this as Yet Another Example of how newcomer-friendliness is inherently in tension with rewards-investors :-).  It's hard to make find-file-on-a-directory less surprising for newcomers without either reducing the feature's investability (that is, without reducing a persistent new user's ability to learn about it by digesting a surprise and comprehending it) or reducing the feature's utility to the experienced users who are already familiar with it.

So, IMHO, we should change nothing about Emacs's behavior here: I think `find-file' does the best thing it can do right now.

(However, maybe it would be good to cover this behavior, or at least warn about it, in the tutorial or in other new-user help documentation -- I haven't looked at that documentation in a long time, so I can't say for sure.)

Best regards,
-Karl