I noticed that the status of this issue was changed to resolved and was
wondering if that meant that it will work in a future version of gnupg or if
it means that nothing will/can be done for the Windows version, i.e. a disk
write will be required each time, and the issue is just closed?

This only occurs in Windows, not in Linux.

I'm sorry, I believe that you wanted me to do this on the other end; when
encrypting. I can sucessfully use -d on the created output file, but it seems
*to me* that the funtionality allowing to paste to a windows command line
program(GnuPG), in the windows command line, especially when I am able to do
the same thing in GnuPG when not using a symmetric cipher, should be expected.

That was all done from the command line in Windows XP, exactly as shown.
Adding the output line defeats the purpose for me, but it still does the same
thing even if I add the output line; no output file is produced and I get the
same message.

When using GnuPG 1.4.9 for Windows(official build), I cannot paste an
encrypted message that was created using a symmetric cipher and decrypt. I
receive a bad key messages as shown in the example below which uses the
password "test".

I understand your conclusion. I know nothing of GnuPG's demographics other
than what I might guess. If there are a number of users who may be unaware,
then I think that it might be helpful information to include somewhere. I do
think however that to introduce change in the software because of a lack of
knowledge would only contribute to the continued lack of knowledge.

If the last question was posed to me I do no know how to respond, especially
since Werner said that he did not experience the issue on his W2000 box. I am
fairly new to linux and found a suggestion of using ' or " around filenames
with metacharacters. When I put " apostrophe's around the directory/file
names I got it to work in Fedora, *and on Windows XP as well.* I had never
heard of using quotes like that in DOS command line before. e.g. gpg -sear
Alice "c:\directory spaced\file spaced.txt" Is this something that you
assumed I would be doing before Werner, and when you mentioned that the issue
had been fixed awhile back? Is it correct that it should be working this way
on both platforms? I would like to suggest adding this to the *w32* manual if
this is simply a matter of my not entering the apostrophe's when I should have
been.

I cannot work with files with spaces in Fedora either. I am running kernel
2.6.18-1.2849.fc6 and GnuPG version 1.4.6-2.i386 .

The official version I assume. I always download the Windows version from
here ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32cli-1.4.6.exe

? I am speaking of gpg(GnuPG) for W32 version 1.4.6, Windows XP SP2. I
apologize, I just realized that this is not happening with all long filename,
and that it occurs with short names as well. The issue appears to be just
with names with spaces. I changed the title of this issue to reflect that.
Perhaps it isn't possible resolve with the way commands are undertood, but
here is an example of what I am referring to. Say I wanted to encrypt a file
on my Desktop which requires accessing files in spaced directories or, as an
easier example, say I have a file that I want to encrypt named
"file spaced.txt" in a directory "C:\directory spaced". I would have to
enter "gpg -sear Alice C:\direct~1\filesp~1.txt"