Hi there,
Searched for this and didn’t find a clear answer. Are there any plans to bring Hookmark to Windows (and Linux) as well? I know about the plans to bring Hookmark apps to iOS / iPadOS.
My context is, I heavily use Hookmark for scientific research. But not everyone in the research group uses macOS. My dream is to have something like a cross-platform macOS Finder Alias file (Alias (Mac OS) - Wikipedia), that allows for robust file linking from both the CLI and GUI, regardless if people are using macOS, Linux, or Windows. But best I can tell such an OS level solution doesn’t exist. Closest thing is symlinks, which are brittle.
A true cross-platform way to share files at the application level, would be a .URL Internet Shortcut file (An Unofficial Guide to the URL File Format) , that are encoding Hookmark hook:// links. (That to my understanding, are more robust / akin to finder Aliases)
Thoughts?
Since you are the only user on this thread, I think it’s OK to reply and bump an old thread.
I’m a massive fan of Hookmark and the way it is designed and its charging model. It could be my favourite software of all time for that reason. However, platform lock-in serious negates everything. I was reminded of this when shopping for a new laptop recently.
It’s understandable to keep things simple. Staying to one platform makes everything massively easier. Adding Windows, Linux, iOS, Android would be a massive undertaking. From that point of view, it doesn’t make sense.
But platform lock-in isn’t a problem that is going away because avoiding it is hard. Being beholden to Apple is not a good idea. It takes some work to avoid, but it’s possible, and pays dividends.
To that end, if users have a Mac, then I think they need to educate themselves about how the data is stored and how accessible it is.
I haven’t looked at this in masses of detail, but the data is pretty exportable and easy to work with. I also want to say that as a last option, I search by filename and I always kept filenames verbose, even though I need that less due to hookmark.
I made a thread about backing up the links here: Backup linked files HOWTO
I’d like to offer more help, but I’m also fishing for other people’s input: What can you do with hookmark to keep your data portable? Personally I try to make sure I use it in a way that helps my daily work, but I can recover from if it’s not available anymore, like on my phone. Let’s discuss strategies.