That depends on the kind of document. You can, for example, link to a page in a PDF and possibly to a certain point in an MD document if that point has an HTML id attribute. Same for formatted notes (that is just HTML, isn’t it)?
But you can’t link to a certain “point” in a text document because there’s no syntax to address “points” in text documents.
And you can’t link to documents outside DT unless the app managing them provides a custom URL scheme.
Once browsers (or rather HTML engines) have implemented text fragements, you might get more options for HTML documents (aka formatted notes). For MD, I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Actually, in addition to standard item links pointing to a document…
In a PDF, you can capture a page link, a selection link, or an annotation link.
In rich text and plain text, you can capture a paragraph link.
In HTML formats, e.g., formatted note, you can capture a highlighting selection link, i.e., a text fragment.
In Markdown source, you can capture section links if a header is detected. @cgrunenberg would have to comment on whether a paragraph link should be available in the source outside of sections.
For linking inside DEVONthink, item links are displayed in the Document > Links inspector. So while adding an item link to a document’s contents doesn’t create a backlink between the documents, the backlink is accessible via the inspector.
Thank you, Jim. Another very helpful summary which I think will help the inquirer from Reddit, as well. And now if I find myself doing a sales pitch for DEVONthink, I’ll try to be a little more precise. (In my defense, I’m not selling on commission. :-] )
I realize my request is a bit demanding—in your screenshot you can indeed see a link from location A in New Rich Text 2.rtf to location B in New Rich Text 2.pdf, but there’s no way when viewing B to know that it’s linked from A; you only see that somewhere in the New Rich Text 2.pdf there’s an incoming link.
What I really want is something like this feature which shows backlinks for the current region as you scroll. Even better would be a LiquidText-style view that draws lines directly between the two points. (Honestly I haven’t found any other app that does this, and I realize DEVONthink isn’t a dedicated PDF reader—just venting, not actually demanding a new feature.)
