Thanks, this would suggest they problem can be triggered in Big Sur, if not other OS versions that Tinderbox supports. Within that context, I’ve a hunch the loss of anchor text for an existing text link is likely related to the older issue mentioned above.
For better or worse, the status quo, is that Tinderbox text link anchors are defined as character offsets within the string that is the plain-text <text> stored version of text. Meanwhile, the Smart URLs are only encoded in the <rtfd> version of text; the latter are not currently adopted as formal Tinderbox links (due to past technical issues) though they work as clickable (web) links within ($Text). Also see linked documentation as well as that for the link data in <links>.
I opened the .tbx file in TextEdit (with Preferences > New Document first set to Plain text) and followed along with your description of the <text><rtfd> and <links> tags. Thanks for that explanation.
I just updated to Big Sur 11.3 and see the link behavior described above is unchanged from 11.2.3. I understand Tinderbox 9 will bring changes that likely will address this.
Also, on the Make Web Link... keyboard shortcut control-option-command-l not working on my machine: I do indeed have 1Password installed, which grabs that shortcut first at startup. Thanks for clearing up that mystery.
Yes, it drove me mad. Oddly there isn’t an app that you can ask "Who handles this […] shortcut. Closest is this experimental (free) app Shortcut Detectivehttps://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/labs/https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/labs/. Checking now I’m not sure it still works (probably ongoing under-the-hood OS security/compartmentalisation changes. The only other route is to close all (UI) apps and switch out load other until you see changes.