💡 Tip: How to Copy Quotes and Deep Links to PDFs In DEVONthink

Discussion & Help
1

If you are a knowledge worker (lawyer, academic, etc.) then you work deeply with a ton of PDF files. You often need to refer to specific locations of a PDF file. Hookmark has you covered.

Hookmark makes it very easy to get a deep link to a specific PDF location in DEVONthink (and other apps). Here’s how.

1. open a PDF in DEVONthink
2. select some text
3. invoke Hookmark
4. choose Copy Link, Copy As Markdown Link, or Copy As Universal Link

Copy Link in DEVONthink
Copy Link in DEVONthink1920×1621 307 KB

5. paste the link anywhere

Here’s an example DEVONthink deep link:

Beaudoin-2020-Mental Perturbance An integrative design-oriented concept for understanding repetitive thought emotions and related phenomena involving a loss of control of executive functions-Beaudoin2020cm-10.21810sfuer.v13i1.1282

The Markdown source of that link looks like this:

[Beaudoin-2020-Mental Perturbance An integrative design-oriented concept for understanding repetitive thought emotions and related phenomena involving a loss of control of executive functions-Beaudoin2020cm-10.21810sfuer.v13i1.1282](x-devonthink-item://EF45B9F4-DA89-487E-AC1C-B2F3788263B7?page=3&start=2374&length=387)

Quote the PDF with the Copy Selection and Link command

Hookmark enables you to easily copy the selection in a PDF while including a hyperlink to the location in the PDF from which the quote is drawn. This is very handy for lawyers and academics who need to navigate many large PDFs.

1. select some text in a PDF in DEVONthink
2. invoke Hookmark
3. click on the action button
4. choose Copy Selection and Link

Copy Selection and Link in DEVONthink
Copy Selection and Link in DEVONthink1920×1271 249 KB

5. paste the link anywhere.

here’s an example :

The somnolent information processing theory (Beaudoin, 2014c; Beaudoin et al. 2019; Lemyre, Belzile, Landry, Bastien, & Beaudoin, 2020), while addressing the sleep onset control system in an IDO manner is less agentic: it deals with specific functions which, while grounded in a broader, agentic IDO theory, are essential to autonomous agency (adaptively controlling the onset of sleep).
Beaudoin-2020-Mental Perturbance An integrative design-oriented concept for understanding repetitive thought emotions and related phenomena involving a loss of control of executive functions-Beaudoin2020cm-10.21810sfuer.v13i1.1282

the source:

> The somnolent information processing theory (Beaudoin, 2014c; Beaudoin et al. 2019; Lemyre, Belzile, Landry, Bastien, & Beaudoin, 2020), while addressing the sleep onset control system in an IDO manner is less agentic: it deals with specific functions which, while grounded in a broader, agentic IDO theory, are essential to autonomous agency (adaptively controlling the onset of sleep).
[Beaudoin-2020-Mental Perturbance An integrative design-oriented concept for understanding repetitive thought emotions and related phenomena involving a loss of control of executive functions-Beaudoin2020cm-10.21810sfuer.v13i1.1282](x-devonthink-item://EF45B9F4-DA89-487E-AC1C-B2F3788263B7?page=3&start=2374&length=387&search=The%20somnolent%20information%20processing%20theory%20(Beaudoin,%202014c%3B%20Beaudoin%20et%20al.%202019%3B%20Lemyre,%20Belzile,%20Landry,%20Bastien,%20%26%20Beaudoin,%202020),%20while%20addressing%20the%20sleep%20onset%20control%20system%20in%20an%20IDO%20manner%20is%20less%20agentic%3A%20it%20deals%20with%20specific%20functions%20whic)

Make Hookmark File

You can of course also create a .hookmark file that points to a specific deep location in a DEVONthink PDF.

  1. select some text in a PDF in DEVONthink
  2. invoke Hookmark
  3. choose Make Hookmark File

Make Hookmark File
Make Hookmark File1920×1227 203 KB

Hookmark will create a Hookmark file that points to the specific location in the PDF. You can store that Hookmark file anywhere you want.

A Hookmark file is a plain text file with “.hookmark” as the suffix; the file contains a link. When you double click on this file, Hookmark will open the target of the link. If it’s a deep link, Hookmark will tell the PDF app to scroll to where the link refers in that PDF file.

See Make Hookmark File for more information.

Hooking a resource to a deep location in the PDF

After you’ve copied a deep link to a PDF, you can also hook that link to another location, such as topic page on this forum. To do this, use the Hook to Copied Link on the other resource (such as this forum post). When you invoke Hookmark on the forum topic in the future, you’ll see a deep link that takes you straight to the specific location in the PDF to which the link refers.

Here’s what the link looks like on this side of the hook:

result 2
result 21920×1217 234 KB

Here’s what the link looks like on the PDF side of the hook:

result
result1920×1439 243 KB

See Hook to Copied Link for more information.

See also

Other apps supporting deep PDF links

There are other apps that support deep linking with Hookmark:

There are also other non-PDF apps to which Hookmark can create deep links, such as Bike and OmniOutliner.

4 Likes
2

Hi Luc, I am running DT 3.9.6 and Hookmark v 6.1 (5967) script v 322. I get a handy link to the selection if I use ⌘C and paste into text edit. But the link is formatted with the title of document displayed not actual selected text. Also copy selection and link is greyed out. Any thoughts?

3

Yes that is expected.

This should be enabled. It is a Hookmark Pro feature. Do you have Hookmark Pro or Standard. If Standard, here is the upgrade page:

4

I have never heard of the “pro” feature set. How would one tell? When was this introduced? I looked at the link you posted, and I have access to all those features listed in pro, including copy markdown link, hookmark files etc. I hope I am not confabulating but sure I could hit ⌃Q at and it worked. But not now, I have scrolled through all preferences, and cannot see any indication of standard vs pro. If this is recently introduced hope features haven’t been removed and shifted to a pro version.

5

Sorry about this.

It seems to me you have Hookmark PRO. For now you can find the license info in Hookmark about window. We will add this info to Hookmark Preferences Updates pane in next release.

6

Well that is good to know, do you know why the ⌃Q (copy selection and link) is greyed out and not available after selecting text in pdf, then invoking Hookmark? Have I overlooked something?

7

Never mind @bchend, ⌃Q seems to work, it’ s pretty slick by the way. Awesome feature as use DT3 all the time. I am not sure what the issue was, but I was having a clash between short cuts with launch bar and Hookmark (when brining up Hookmark the Launchbar window used to briefly appear and disappear), and I changed short cut of Hookmark to invoke window and it seems to work, not sure if two issues were related, but yes it works as advertise by LucB, since then. Clearly indicating version pro vs standard would be welcome, I should know, but I have been using HM quite a while and did’t remember any pro vs standard stuff when I bought it but it was quite a while ago.

8

I’ve started a forum topic about this over on the DEVONthink forum: Hookmark’s use of DEVONthink’s automation to get deep links to PDFs - DEVONthink / Automation - DEVONtechnologies Community.

1 Like
9

Thank you so much Luc for the support for Devonthink in Hookmark - I had been wondering whether I should buy a PDF reader which supported deep links, while I already invested in Devonthink for a long time now.

This update will be really helpful. thanks a lot for it.