I’ve replaced my use of md2gemini with 7off. The main motivation being that I’m not happy with link rendering.
What did md2gemini offer that I was using?
I had been using that spiffy link-after-paragraph format in md2gemini but it was problematic because sometimes I want links to be inline and others I want them to follow the paragraph in which the links appear. I ran into a problem where I couldn’t generically do one or the other and I resorted to doing the in-line links everywhere. This kept my index page sane, but made notes look pretty terrible.
Turns out, 7off can do the format I need for links, it just doesn’t put the little number next to the link. The lack of number was why I originally skipped 7off and stayed with md2gemini.
md2gemini also had another cool feature, the ability to swap .md link extensions for .gmi. I now call sed after I create the gemini output, and while this could lead to replacing a link I wish to keep, I’m not yet linking to anything that would collide. Also, md2gemini would have had this problem, too. Eventually I will have a collision, and when that happens I’ll update the sed expression appropriately.
Depending on the system I happen to be on, I use different software to interact with my notes. I should probably come up with a better write up than just how I use my notes and actually describe the entire architecture somewhere, but I haven’t done that yet. For now, suffice to say I need a sort of compatibility with:
The first two are easy, they support everything, that last point though. Obsidian doesn’t support a lot of otherwise standard Markdown and I need to be able to load up and occasionally edit my notes in Obsidian. The ways that 7off supports links isn’t exactly supported by Obsidian, but if I pick this format:
Lorem ipsum [dolor] sit. [dolor]: link.md "consectetur adipiscing elit"
Then at the very least, Obsidian doesn’t molest it or misinterpret. I can’t click the [dolor] link in the note body, but I can click the link.md after the paragraph, so it’s a good compromise.
I cannot use this format:
Lorem ipsum [dolor][l1] sit. [l1]: link.md "consectetur adipiscing elit"
Because if I do, Obsidian will create a new file with a bracket in the name if I click the link in the paragraph.
And of course, the standard form of inline link works fine.
2023-04-18 - reference links, the alternate link format
updated: 2023-03-31 07:38:17
generated: 2024-06-15