Convert to Markdown Changed Behavior, Now Escaping characters?

DEVONthink
1

Hello Devonthink Community,

In the past three weeks or so, I’ve noticed a change in how Devonthink’s Convert --> to Markdown feature operates. At least, it seems to be a change from how the feature worked in the past. Specifically, when I am converting a text document to a markdown document, Convert to Markdown now escapes characters by putting the backward slash in front of characters that Markdown uses for headers, links, etc. For example a text file that has:

# This is Header 1
## This is Header 2
[Link to article](https://linkme.org/object/linked)

Is turned into a Markdown file with:

\# This is Header 1
\#\# This is Header 2
\[Link to article\]\(https://linkme.org/object/linked\)

Because Devonthink’s convert feature escapes the Markdown codes, what was once a series of automated scripts and smart rules in my workflow to turn text documents with Markdown elements into actual Markdown documents (research notes from Bookends) no longer works properly.

Question 1: Am I correct that a recent update to Devonthink has altered how Convert to Markdown works?

Question 2: Is there a way to return the Convert to Markdown operation to the prior process? I.E., can I alter how the Convert process works to prevent it from escaping the Markdown codes in a text file?

Thank you, community, for any assistance or direction you can provide.

Kirt

2

That’s correct.

After enabling the hidden preference PlainTextIsMarkdown the conversion might be actually unnecessary.

1 Like
3

@cgrunenberg,

Thank you. Yes, changing the PlainTextIsMarkdown hidden preference worked. My Plain Text Documents with markdown codes are rendered as Markdown.

Even better, I am also able to use “Convert to Markdown” and, with the PlainTextIsMarkdown set to TRUE, the converted file no longer includes escaped characters. This is important because converting the Plain Text Document to Markdown is still useful for my workflow (even though the text file is rendered as Markdown), because my smart rules use Kind:Markdown searches.

Thank you for the quick reply and assistance.

Best,

Kirt