I think a mis-presumption floating at the edge of the conversation is that Tinderbox constantly re-scans notes to find/adopt web links (assuming $SmartLinks is true) . A linked assumption is that we always want:
- any URL in a note to be a ‘live’ link
- all possible URLs in a note to be links
Those may be true for some but not all users/circumstances. In general terms, I think Tinderbox gets the balance right in terms of (not over-)detecting and link-ifying URLs†.
The confusion here is all the kludges we’re discussing to make Tinderbox do something it doesn’t do when working manually! Here is the sample text from the test TBX:
In the grab, the first URL has been manually adopted by the OP putting the text cursor at the end of the URL and pressing Return (and thus the extra bank line). Importantly, and pertinent to the above discussion, that ‘edit’ action affects only the current URL (possibly the current line/paragraph‡).
The kludges suggested above are fine for occasional use but not realistic for an automated process elsewhere the whole point is to drive out unwanted manual, per-use, steps. IOW, what OK for fixing 1 use, isn’t so for something done 100s of times.
The starting scenario and further in-app edit testing shows there is a valid use case for being able to invoke—manually or via action code—a scan of $Text to find & adopt ‘bare’ URLs as Tinderbox web links. The code for this process already exists in the app. The missing part of the puzzle is on-demand invocation of the process for the whole of a current note’s $Text (as opposed to per URL or per $Text paragraph).
Separately, the seeming confusion about other apps providing the ‘correct’ text ought not to be so. We can observer a (un))expected result but the only really know why if we know what the originating app put on the clipboard: presumption != certainty, thus the unexpected results in some cases.
†. I’m not 100% sure what the detection rubric is but it appears to be the presence of :// between two spaces of paragraph start/end. Thus false detections are possible, typing we:/think in $Text makes a web link. A deliberate edge test and no harm as the occasional ‘mis-link’ can be right-clicked and deleted from the context menu (or via Browse Links. Note, that full auto-detection of links is an (unseen) 2-step process. In the moment the URL is detected and a web-link made. But, the link is not fully adopted/reported in Browse Links un til the note is de-/re-selected. That said, I doubt any but a few may trip on the latter: I note it for those who do.
‡. Testing in v9.6.1, editing a line with two un-linked URLs by the above Return key method the results are inconsistent. Sometimes all un-linked URLs in the line are adopted, other times only the one preceding the edit point.
