Re: A wish, a plea

[Richard Stallman]

    Personally, I usually start Emacs with Dired. That too might be a
    possibility: start in `~/'. That gives users flexibility in terms of opening
    existing files or new ones, and they can see what files are available.
    Another possibility is to have an explicit option for the startup directory
    (default `~/'). Just a thought.

That might be a good idea.  The only drawback would be when
the home dir is so large that this is very slow.

I find it a pain in the neck to start the file dialogs of many GUI apps
because they insist on reading my whole homedir before letting me
specify a file.  Bad design!