Comment 2 for bug 1267353

I think it's a good idea, but we should tell the user what's going on. Otherwise he might be confused. Maybe he expected symlinks to be copied, because of his logical thinking ("I know symlink to a file isn't a file itself. Why did file got copied, not symlink?"). Maybe someone told him that symlinks will be copied, not files. Maybe he thinks symlink is a fancy name for Windows' shortcut and expects them to behave the same.

I don't think beginner users will _have_ any symlinks, let alone copy them, so IMHO it's fine to show moderately technical explanation. ("This is a symbolic link. It is only an arrow that points to the file and it's useless without the file itself. (It remembers the location of a file.) Do you want to paste only a symbolic link or a file itself?")

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When I think more about that idea: if I copy symlinks inside a filesystem, it makes sense to NOT dereference them. So it should only dereference them while:
- copying onto external media
- original file doesn't get copied on this media (If it does, we copy only the symlink and update it with new path.).

But then someone is used to one behavior (not dereferencing) and suddenly when he copies symlinks onto a pendrive, Files behaves differently (dereferences them)! Then he gets all confused, and this means our UX is bad. So it's best to either stick to one behavior or show info/warning when user initiates another behavior. (Or show window with some info and buttons and let them pick the behavior.)