Toolbar indicator shows question mark despite linked items

Discussion & Help
1

Hi,

firstly, congratulations on the many improvements in Hookmark 5 beta.

I’m writing in to report the following: While hooking items in MarginNote and TheBrain works really well with the current integration scripts, the toolbar indicator always shows a question mark.

It would be really helpful, if I could see via the toolbar indicator that a thought (in TheBrain) or excerpt (in MarginNote) is hooked to other items.

I would appreciate it if you could look into this at some point.

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2

Thank you, glad you like it!

That is explained by the first of these two points on
Menu bar icon badge showing number of links to the current item – Hookmark:

The third, indeterminate, state has two possible causes:

  1. The app is not URL-friendly, meaning it lacks adequate automation for linking. For such apps, Hookmark may rely on “UI scripting” when you invoke the Hookmark window. But Hookmark would not use UI scripting in other circumstances, because it would interfere with your use of the application. For example, unlike Nitro PDF, as of 2022-06-12 PDF Expert is still not URL friendly. URL unfriendly apps are marked with on the Linkable Mac Apps webpage. We borrowed the expression “URL-friendly” from CogSci Apps Corp. advisor, David Sparks. See the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking for more information about URL friendliness.
  2. The third state is also currently encountered with apps that are URL-friendly but that do not support AppleScript for linking. Those are mainly x-callback-url apps. We might be able to provide a hooked-status badge for them in the future.

Those two apps are listed as :thinking: rather than :+1: because they lack the simple automation described in Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking. (See also: What’s a Link-Friendly App and Why Does Being Linkable Matter? – Hookmark).

3

Hi @LucB

Thanks for clarifying.

However, purely from a technical standpoint I don’t understand - from the outside - why it isn’t possible.

The scripts are able to recognize the title and link of the objects in MarginNote and TheBrain. Therefore, Hookmark should be able to determine the number of linked objects in the Hookmark database. This information, in turn, could be sent back to the toolbar icon.

All I’m saying is: Could you guy perhaps try to find a workaround? :wink:

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4

The problem is that they use UI scripting. It would lead to very bad effects if Hookmark randomly interacted via UI scripting with the app (clicking menus, and issuing commands). UI scripting works well in Hookmark’s Context window because the user has explicitly invoked Hookmark , which can do its work quickly and then get out of the way. The menu bar icon feature polls the app asynchronously.

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