Some good URLs won’t launch in the URL field

DEVONthink
1

Hello! This URL works when it has been pasted as note text and self-highlights and I click on it. But it does not work when I paste it inside the URL field in the Inspector and click “Launch” in the URL-field dropdown.

highlights://Hegel,%20G.%20W.%20F.%20%5B1975%5D%20Hegel’s%20Logic%20%5B3e%5D-%20Being%20Part%20One%20of%20the%20Encyclopaedia%20of%20the%20Philosophical%20Sciences%20(1830)%20%5BWallace,%20Findlay%5D#page=7

But other Highlights URLs do launch from that field, such as this one:

highlights://Magee,%20G.%20A.%20%5B2010%5D%20The%20Hegel%20Dictionary#page=263

UPDATE: It seems that the hyphen is the offending character, but it only offends inside the URL field. This is bad news because the hyphen is used to replace all illegal chars in filenames in most apps. Hope this little discovery helps!

2

An ASCII hash shouldn’t be a problem (just checked this using an item link and the parameter search=word1-word2) or is it a Unicode character in the original URL?

3

You are correct, the hyphen is not guilty.

I did a bunch of trails and learned something.

Dupe a small crap PDF and rename it by pasting this exact filename:

Hegel, G. W. F. [1975] Logic [3e]- Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830) copy.pdf

Then highlight a word using Highlights.app, do Copy Link, and paste that link into a DT record’s URL field:

highlights://Hegel,%20G.%20W.%20F.%20%5B1975%5D%20Logic%20%5B3e%5D-%20Being%20Part%20One%20of%20the%20Encyclopaedia%20of%20the%20Philosophical%20Sciences%20(1830)%20copy#page=5

This will WORK.

Now dupe that working file but rename it this:

Hegel, G. W. F. [1975] Hegel’s Logic [3e]- Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830) [Wallace, Findlay].pdf

And now again do the Copy Link, and paste that link into a DT record’s URL field:

highlights://Hegel,%20G.%20W.%20F.%20%5B1975%5D%20Hegel’s%20Logic%20%5B3e%5D-%20Being%20Part%20One%20of%20the%20Encyclopaedia%20of%20the%20Philosophical%20Sciences%20(1830)%20%5BWallace,%20Findlay%5D#page=9

This will FAIL.

So now it looks like the curly closing single quote ’ is the culprit!

4

This quote should actually be percent escaped too but Highlights.app didn’t.