Something strange is happening to hyperlinks in documents when I compile for markdown. Instead of a useable hyperlink, I’m getting a bunch of diagonal lines interested. For instance, the hyperlink that should look like this:
https://www.ted.com/talks/kandice_sumner_how_america_s_public_schools_keep_kids_in_poverty, ends up looking like this:
https://www.ted.com/talks/kandice\_sumner\_how\_america\_s\_public\_schools\_keep\_kids\_in\_poverty
Any help?
Cheers,
Ama
I don’t see anything like that, but I cannot know any of any of your settings and configuration details. When you say you are compiling for Markdown, what does that mean? I pasted your example link into a blank project’s starter document, set Compile for: “MultiMarkdown”, and chose the “Basic MultiMarkdown” option from the Format sidebar. I didn’t bother with assigning section layouts since as-is was fine for the test. The rest is all defaults, and the compiled output is:
[code]Title: MultiMarkdown Link Check
Author: AmberV
https://www.ted.com/talks/kandice_sumner_how_america_s_public_schools_keep_kids_in_poverty
[/code]
Tested with the built-in copy of MMD (v5.4).
HI AmberV,
First, thank you for taking the time to get back to me.
I was able to reproduce the correct link in a new project, but when I tried the same thing in an existing project, things went sideways. Strangely enough, links to short URLs work just fine.
I’ve linked to a video showing you what I’m seeing. In the first sequence, you’ll see me link to google, and in the longer on to the link I mentioned in the previous post. For each, I will test the link in Scrivener, then export it and open it in a markdown editor. In the first, you’ll see that the link is correctly formatted. In the second, you’ll see that the strange “/” are being included.
Please let me know if you have any ideas and/or if any other information would be useful. I’ve also attached a stripped down version of the Scrivener project with only the document that is causing me trouble included. All the settings are identical to those in my working project.
Cheers,
Ama
[Links Removed]
Okay, thanks. So in fact the source material is rich text and you are converting it to MultiMarkdown with the compiler option. It looks like the code that is making sure things print as you type them is being applied to the URL that is inserted during the conversion of a hyperlink into a Markdown link—which I would classify as a bug.
To explain how it got that way, the RTF conversion mode will make every attempt to ensure the original text looks the same across multiple compile formats—as you typed it into the editor. So for example if you type in “test_this_line” and compile to PDF, you will see precisely that. If you compile to MultiMarkdown with the RTF conversion, the Markdown file itself will print “test_this_line”, but that’s because the “_” character is a special one used by Markdown itself to start and stop italics (it’s synonymous with asterisks). The ultimate effect is the same however as the PDF, when you convert the Markdown to HTML or whatever, you’ll see “test_this_line”, as originally typed, instead of “testthisline”, which probably isn’t what you want. 
I’ll make sure Keith is aware of it, and in the meantime there isn’t a good workaround given how this works, short of removing the “\” yourself after compiling.
Thank you AmberV. I can certainly go through and clean things up.
Here’s hoping there will be a fix soon. This is a very annoying problem because I have quite a few links to websites in my documents.
Cheers,
Ama
This was an easy fix. It will be in the upcoming 3.0.2 maintenance update (no ETA yet). If you can defer compiling until then, that might be the easiest all around.
Hi AmberV,
Sorry. I can’t wait to compile. I’m a teacher, and I use Scrivener to prepare posts to the class discussion board. I need to make those updates weekly.
Cheers,
Ama