In fact his description was good enough for me to understand exactly what the problem was and why it happens.

His difficulty is in figuring out where and when most users should learn that this is obvious. You tell him that he should RTFM. He is asking you which M is TFM to R. You have so far failed to come up with a shorter answer than, Become a guru first, then it will be obvious. Which seriously begs the question.

Frankly I am having the same difficulty that Todd is. I see the problem. I see why it is a problem. I see problems with virtually any attempted solution. However I also don't see any documentation that most users - even more competent technical users - would see that says this.

Let me put this another way. If I explain this problem to someone with a moderately strong technical inclination who did not know it, what can I tell them that they should learn about (short of "everything") to make this kind of thing obvious to them in the future?

Cheers,
Ben