[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="Karl"
 subject="Symbolic links are not supported by Windows applications"
 date="2015-02-06T22:27:27Z"
 content="""
Hi!

I did research the practical usage of (real) NTFS-links (junktions + links) when I was programming http://tagstore.org since it would have been a clean solution for that purpose as well.

However, I have to say that NTFS-links only work in theory. First of all, you have to be Administrator to create links by mklink. And secondly, most end-user applications can't cope with links.

The latter one is the real fun-killing issue: many applications (even from Microsoft) are renaming a freshly opened file to a temporary file name. When the user is appending data, the temporary file gets updated. Only when the user is (manually) saving, a *new* file with the original file name is created. This results in *replacing* the original file with the new copy. Unfortunately, links are not handled properly. This way, many applications end up replacing the original linked file with an ordinary file when saving.
"""]]
