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


From: Thibaut Verron
Subject: Re: What is the most useful potential feature which Emacs lacks?
Date: Sat, 30 May 2020 07:23:03 +0200

Le ven. 29 mai 2020 à 15:20, Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> a écrit :
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > This seems like a reasonable solution to me. Alternatively perhaps we
>   > just need to sell C-x C-f as "open a file or directory" rather than
>   > "find a file"?
>
> That would make our initial explanations more complex, and that might
> lead to more confusion than clarity.
>
> I think it is better to explain this wrinkle when the user encounters it,
> not before.

Aren't users encountering that wrinkle first time they open a file?

Observe there are even more wrinkles there to explain: if file does not
exist Emacs creates a new buffer, and if user ment a directory, the
buffer will still be just a plain file not a dir. And what about if
there are some non-existent directories on the way? Emacs asks if  user
wants them to be created ... so there are quite a few wrinkles in that
one, not the simplest behaviour to explain anyway :-).

But those are consistent with how other software behaves. The user won't think of a buffer as much as of a not-yet-saved file, but that's also consistent with what emacs does. 

Other software would force the directory to be created before opening the file, but that's minor I believe. 

Being able to open a directory just like a file, on the other hand, is not usual. Web browsers can do it, but that's because their "files" are almost like directories. 

I personally like the ido approach of having different keys for accessing files and directories. Simple operations like listing files or creating a new one are done directly in the ido buffer, no need for dired. 

Thibaut 

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