Obsidian style image links in comparison to markdown image links behave weirdly

With the new support for (among others) obsidian syntax I wanted to check out the very nice image syntax, which looks like this: ![[example.png]] or even ![[example]].

This doesn’t seem to work if I want to put a path in there:

The screenshot shows that obsidian style syntax works in the opposite cases of standard markdown image links: The first obsidian style link links to the only picture (document) named hmhmhmhm(.png) in the location /3_Ressourcen/Memes/hmhmhmhm.png. The second obsidian style image link tries to do the same but is using a full path: This doesn’t work. For the markdown image links the results are flipped.

Also note that the first version of obsidian style linking only works if I have exactly one image named hmhmhmhm in my database, if I have two, then only the closest one to my markdown file would be linkeable, e.g. if I would have another file named hmhmhmhm.png in the same group, then only this image could be linked.

![[example.png]]

That’s not an image link. That’s an Obsidian-style transclusion link and you can’t transclude image files. From Help > Documentation > Documents > Markdown Documents

Note: The default transclusion syntax is {{ filename }}.

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You can embed attachment files like images or audio in your notes. Use the ![[filename.png]] syntax like so[…]

From Obsidian‘s help.

So DT is incompatible to Obsidian‘s syntax (and its capabilities) after all? Also from the example you can see that in fact you can embed images in this way. It’s just incomplete/buggy.

To put it differently: Obsidian is incompatible to other Markdown dialects like GruberMark (the mother of it all), CommonMark, GFM, MultiMarkdown. Actually, I’ve not found a single occurence of this Obsidian syntax for images. Which makes me wonder if you should may be ask them why they went for something different? Everywhere else, ![image.png] is used to include an image.

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You mean, ![image.png](image.png)? :slight_smile:

Right, my mistake: ![title or some other text](image.png) is the usual MD syntax. Which Obsidian apparently deliberately ignores.

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Yes. But DT claims, if I understand the Release Notes correctly, that it supports this different syntax. I’m aware and have used the standard markdown image links for many years now. I just find this syntax very convenient to write.

Only as an alternative to MultiMarkdown’s {{ ... }} file transclusion syntax which supports currently only text, Markdown and HTML documents.

As I noted from the Help, transclusion only supports plain text, Markdown, and HTML documents are transcluded contents.

Obsidian’s syntax is not standard and we are not supporting any and all the syntax Obsidian (or any other Markdown editor) decides they want to implement.

If nothing else, Obsidian should be supporting the syntax of the Markdown specification.

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@cgrunenberg @BLUEFROG Thanks for the clarification. Two questions:

1.) As can be seen from my example an image can be transcluded. So this is considered a bug?
2.) The problem with using a path while transcluding is probably another bug?

I would also like to voice my support for a feature request to support transclusion of images. Thanks!

Images are not supported by DEVONthink’s transclusion, the standard Markdown image syntax works fine over here (with and without a path)

Can you give an answer to my question 1:

1.) As can be seen from my example an image can be transcluded. So this is considered a bug?

Is it maybe not considered a bug, but a “happy accident”? :wink:
Regarding my question 2: Does transcluding a supported document (not an image) work using a path_ for you?

Could you send me the document and the images? Thanks!

It does as long as the path exists in the database. Did you use a path in the database or a file system path?

Sure!

The document is a markdown document named test1.md and its contents are:

![[hmhmhmhm]]

![[/3_Ressourcen/Memes/hmhmhmhm.png]]

![](hmhmhmhm)

![](/3_Ressourcen/Memes/hmhmhmhm.png)

Here’s the Image:

hmhmhmhm

There is only one image in the db with this name. And it is living at the specified location.

For me it somehow doesn’t. Is the absolute path a problem? It does work, I just had an error in my path. Sorry!

Looks fine over here using the latest internal build :slight_smile:

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:partying_face: Looking forward to it working soon!

This is the expected result, though have the image in the same group as the Markdown file as well as a copy in the Ressourcen group to make the absolute link.

Could you share a comparison site?

I found one yesterday, but it didn’t include the image syntax. It’s a PDF though. For the image syntax, I went through the websites for CommonMark et al

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This is one of the many reasons I love DT:

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