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

[Richard Stallman]

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  > User does `C-x C-f' to find a file, but they hit Return at the
  > wrong moment while typing the file path, causing a Dired buffer
  > comes up visiting the file's directory.  The user is, of course,
  > totally baffled by this result.  And yet it's obvious why this is
  > a good default behavior for `find-file' -- for people who
  > understand what's going on.

This is a useful observation.  How can we arrange to inform users
about this at the right time?

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?

Any other ideas?

    > If we just say "Emacs should be easier for newcomers to learn",
    > that's not a useful rallying cry IMHO.

I think it can have a practical benefit -- if it motivates people to
observe beginners' stumbling blocks as you have done, and then to study
how to help beginners cope with them.

What other frequent points of confusion have you observed?

It could be useful to make a list of those, and we could
try to work on each of them over time.

  > If we say instead "Emacs should try to attract newcomers who have
  > a higher-than-average probability of becoming high-investment
  > users, and should explain early on to those newcomers what the
  > road ahead looks like"

We should do that, but not by exaggerating.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)