William R. Buckley wrote:
What really surprises me is the effort various members have expended to encourage me not to help your project. I quite think your efforts are misguided.
Well, I suspect this particular issue (the treatment of Windows "shortcuts" in some of the LyX file-open dialogs, on some systems) has met with resistance for a handful of reasons. Some of the regulars here do not care for Windows, and given the opportunity will voice that opinion. Some pointed out that LyX does not own the file-open dialogs; they're part of Qt, so this might be a Qt bug. And so forth.
With most LyX issues, I think you'll find people are interested in at least identifying the problem and searching for a workaround. And the LyX team does release updates quite frequently, with many a bug fixed. Some issues, like this one, prove controversial, but the great majority are accepted by the developers and experienced users.
I might point out that my original posting on this particular subject was not in response to you, but to Richard; and it was simply to note that shortcuts are not a feature of the base Windows OS, but of Explorer. (As I pointed out in another note, they're by no means universally supported in any consistent manner by Windows itself.) I did suggest in that note that not following shortcuts to directories in a file-open dialog could be considered a missing feature.
And that's been my position all along, which is why I also suggested that it would be worth investigating the discrepant behavior - even suggested that *I* might do so, if I can find the time.
I don't think people here are actually trying to discourage you from contributing to the improvement of LyX, and I'm sorry you feel they are. Rather, I'd interpret this thread as a fairly vigorous and opinionated discussion on the issue at hand, its possible underlying causes, and the nature of the problem (a bug? a missing feature? an annoyance? a quirk? in LyX or Qt or Microsoft controls or Windows?) - and the last, though it's not entirely relevant to fixing the problem, does have some weight in evaluating its importance.
-- Michael Wojcik
