Hehe, maybe it's been too long since I had to learn how to use email:-). (Though attaching files seems trivial - click button, click file, click attach? Unless, as indeed sometimes happens, Microsoft intervenes with its bullshit and prevents the receiver from being able to access what the sender meant to offer, by putting it onto the f-ing cloud and then blocking the receiver from accessing it there without jumping through several hoops, rather than simply "attaching the file" as was asked for. But at that point, I wouldn't blame "email" for MS profit-seeking behaviors, trying to work in advertisements for their services into what should have been an extremely simple procedure.)

Anyway, pressing the icon labelled as "cross-post" does not seem to always make a cross-post, or perhaps more precisely it sometimes can make a bidirectional linkage whereas other times it will only make a unidirectional one - thus allowing the post to show up multiple times in people's feeds, while also not notifying people who click on the original link from knowing that there even is a second one (i.e. it is not fully "cross-linked"). Even when done by the same author as back-to-back actions, and even when pressing the button when you are already at one of the posts - but in any case both the page and the Lemmy software definitely "knows" the origin of the post, as well as the destination point too. So bidirectional linkages seem like they could always be made? The URL perhaps made it easier for the software to do the tracking but it's not the only possible way?

Well, it's not like I am volunteering to learn Rust and contribute towards a solution - and beggers cannot be choosers - though I was just pointing out that there is a lot of such things that continue to trip people up. And the documentation for such seems noticeably lacking. e.g. the sidebar on my instance points to https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html as the get started guide, and lemmy.world points to a different guide at https://support.lemmy.world/quickstart/, but a search for the word "cross" pulls up zero hits in either of them.

I would volunteer to make a post in !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca, except that even after all of this I find that I now know less about cross-posting than I thought I did back before I started:-). Also I think I am in the vast minority to use the webpage interface rather than any of the apps. Plus really, it seems like something that shouldn't need "explanation" as to why it doesn't work as expected, so much as working on the code to make it do so. Which is possibly already happening? And it sounds like something that needs back-end support, not something that an app could just do on its own.

Well, there's my TED talk I suppose:-P.