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

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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>
>   > 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 :-).

I don't know how you reasoned back in days when find file was
introduced/created, but I guess, it was more Unixy, a dir is just a file
(everything in Unix is file), so it was assumed that dirs are just
files? I don't think millenials see dirs as just files, but I don't
know, I might be a bit prejudiced (right word?) here.