The following pair of patches should help, and cure the charset.alias problem.
I'm glad that my ravings helped track down the problem. I may or may not be able to test this out before I dissappear. I'll try and find some time.
I found time. Both patches work perfectly, Jean-Marc. Angus
Here's the tree of the installed LyX 1.3.x on Windows. The Resources/lyx/ subdirectories are also fully populated (includes Resources/lyx/reLyX).
/j/Programs/LyX/
bin/
lyx.exe
noweb2lyx
reLyX
Resources/
locale/
da/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
de/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
es/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
eu/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
fi/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
fr/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
it/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
nl/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
nn/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
no/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
pl/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
ro/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
ru/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
sk/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
sl/
LC_MESSAGES/
lyx.mo
locale.alias
lyx/
bind/
clipart/
doc/
encodings
examples/
help/
images/
kbd/
layouts/
lyx2lyx/
reLyX/
scripts/
templates/
tex/
ui/
CREDITS
chkconfig.ltx
configure*
external_templates
languages
lyxrc.defaults
lyxrc.example
packages.lst
symbols
textclass.lst
man/
man1/
lyx.1
reLyX.1
charset.alias