I don’t know if it is technically feasible/reasonable, but it would be nice if Hook could even supporting linking not just to a file, but to a specific location inside a PDF (or other types of) file, like the PDFoo app does
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reasonable request
There is also a way to use Hook with Curio, which supports deep PDF linking, as described here:
Coming later this year, if all goes according to plan, is more general support in Hook for deep linking of PDFs (after Hook 2.0).
@LucB ah, I was under the impression this was already possible. I wanted to use hook to deep link pdfs and then put them inside obsidian while im typing. I also have DEVONthink and learned about the integration within you two. I can’t figure out if either you or DEVONthink could achieve this. if not, im willing to wait for 2.0 if that’s when it will become available. but if you know of any workaround, let me know so I can purchase the pro version. thank you!
Welcome to the Hook Productivity Forum , @obadiahcruz, and thanks for asking.
I wasn’t aware of [PDFoo app for macOS - onekerato] until @ang mentioned it above. I haven’t tried it yet. But it claims to be able to copy URLs. Hook’s Hook to Copied Link command works with any URL, so it should work with those too. If PDFFoo does not yield a link with a title, you could put one in a Markdown link if you want, and Hook will treat the Markdown link title as a title.
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thank you for the warm welcome! @LucB
sorry I was more so commenting on the deep linking feature for pdfs within any program. I found a keyboard maestro script today that allows me to highlight text inside Devonthink and then have it create an ID and I can paste it using markdown to reference back inside obsidian. I was hoping I could avoid scripts and use hook for this with a url. I wasn’t asking about PDFoo app, im really sorry for making you investigate further about it!
That’s what Doug Engelbart called “in-file addressability” and implemented on his NLS platform (in the 1960s!).
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Welcome to the Hook Productivity Forum , @Technoshaman ,and thanks for mentioning the person who got there first, Doug Engelbart. Amazing that so many years later, the “last mile” of information networks, which is actually the first mile, still has not been fully bridged.
In The Future of Text book, which will be published in Nov, there’s a chapter, “A manifesto for user and automation interfaces for hyperlinking: How hypertext can enhance cognitive productivity” , by me and Daniel Jomphe which is is framed with reference to Douglas Englebart’s work.
We’ll publish a manifesto on hyperlinking website and invite signatories. This says a few words about it: What’s a Linkable App and Why Does Linkability Matter? – Hook
(Hook aims to help users bridge the first/last mile of information networks. Fortunately, a lot of software has the automation required for that. But still not all.)
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Hello @obadiahcruz, I have so far solved linking with Hook on my site with a combination of Keyboard Maestro and BetterTouchTool:
So far I have marked the links with an underline. I would be very interested in the mentioned AppleScript, which highlights the text in color. Could you provide me with a link to this script?
I would like to second calls for Hook integration with PDFoo. The deep linking capability seems to be more sophisticated than available in either Skim or PDFPen. Couple things are especially great about deep linking with PDFoo: a) shortened links (which are helpful when pasting in apps like Taskpaper which do not use hyperlinks – the long hook links look crummy); b) bullseye links to specific areas on a single PDF page (looks like this: pdfoo://apphelp/1/@loc/54x/870y/). Finally – the app is cheap - about $6. All of this persuaded me to abandon the Skim/Hook deeplinking scheme in favor of PDFoo.
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For the record, Hook works out of the box with PDFoo, but not yet providing deep links.
If you want to generate deep links to PDFoo docs you can try the solution described in Using Hook with PDFoo – Hook. But please see the caveats about link formats, and that we will look at creating interchangeable deep PDF links as we do apps for PDF apps that have sufficient automation.