Because I like to work in Obsidian and DevonThink at the same time, I rely on markdown links that have the requirement that the link part is to be urlencoded. Example:
[2020-02-10 - facilethings](2020-02-10%20-%20facilethings)
Links like this are neither clickable (EDIT: in the preview pane, when looking at a note) nor are they picked up as incoming links (when looking at the link target).
I would love for DevonThink to support urlencoded links like this.
I suppose that’s because they are not “links”: There’s neither a (pseudo-)protocol part (http(s)://, file:// x-…://) nor a (pseudo-)host part (example.com, /).
And what should DT (or any other software) do with a simple text like this?
I suppose that’s because they are not “links”
I think that it’s more a question of what is considered a link. What a link is or is not is defined in some way. E. g. in DT it’s either a path or a url. What I propose is to add urlencoded paths to the possible options. In other words: I’d like to add to the definition of what is considered a markdown link.
And what should DT (or any other software) do with a simple text like this?
Hm? What would you like me to explain better? I’m not sure I follow.
Both DT3 and Obsidian support [[2020-02-10 - FacileThings]].
Then you might want to prepend it with file:///Alternatively, provide an absolute (!) path to it. Otherwise, DT (or any other software) has not chance to determine the location of the file. I tried it with two links:
/Users/<user>/Desktop/example%20file.html
and
file:///Users/<user>/Desktop/example%20file.html
Both worked exactly as expected: DT opened them in the default browser.
BTW: The issue is not “URL encoded” or not. DT (and probably all software supporting URLs and linking to them) do support URL encoding. Otherwise, they’d be fairly useless. Rather, it is how you specify the link target. I suppose that DT needs an absolute path so that it can locate the resource.
Where’s the file located in the file system in this case?
Hmmm. I can build a URL encoded link in DEVONthink 3.6 that works as I believe you want.
In the case where I have a document in the database named “Average Grades”:
That link in the right hand pane works.
This is true, but not for image links. And Obsidian can only do one or the other for both types of links (Obsidian came up with this syntax for “wiki” image links ![[image.png]]).
Except Obsidian, I guess? The difference is really just in the encoding of the link.
The difference between [2020-02-10 - facilethings](2020-02-10%20-%20facilethings) and [2020-02-10 - facilethings](2020-02-10 - facilethings) is just in the form of the string of the link. And I am just proposing that DT treats them both as equivalent as regards to what constitutes a link target.
But can you click on it? And does it appear as a link/incoming link? For me it doesn’t.
EDIT: I have noticed that my example link was a little bit confusing. I have change the link in all of my posts. So instead of [2020-02-10 - FacileThings](2020-02-10%20-%20facilethings) (note the different capitalization of facilethings/FacileThings) it now reads everywhere 2020-02-10 - facilethings and [2020-02-10 - facilethings](2020-02-10 - facilethings)
Dear all,
apologies for this scattered thread!
It turns out that the actual problem was NOT with the urlencoded link itself, but with the missing extension. As soon as I changed the link to [2020-02-10 - facilethings](2020-02-10%20-%20facilethings.md) DT was able to pick it up.
I’d still like to know where this file is located in the filesystem. In the case of obsidian, I suppose it might be in it’s “vault”. But what is the “BaseURL” for DEVONthink?
Both of the files are located in /Users/<USER>/Dropbox/Notes. You can link not only absolutely but also relatively. DT indexes that folder.
I’m also very curious why you would like to know the absolute path?
Because it is missing from the link ;-). Suppose you have identically named files in different locations – how is DT going to decided which one to open?
The link will stop working in this case. I just tried it out. However this is not a problem for indexed folders, since the filesystem will enforce unique filenames per folder.
Of course. But I was talking about different folders containing files with the same name. No help from the filesystem there, and the link stops working. That’s why I was wondering about the path (be it absolute or relative).
I see. Well, now you know. 
Yes. I said I could 
(I always test what I post before I post.)
Apologies! I must’ve missed it.
