Don't break links in HTML comments

[oijee]

Use case or problem

My workflow involves rendering notes using Quarto. This requires me to put links to other notes between HTML comment tags (<!-- [[link]] -->) because I do not want them visible in rendered documents.

For some reason, links between these tags are not recognized as links by Obsidian.

Proposed solution

Treat links inside HTML tags (<!-- -->) just like links outside them. Obsidian currently breaks these links for which I see no reason.

Current workaround (optional)

There is a workaround to combine HTML links with the percentage comments like <!-- %% [[link]] %% -->. However, in this case Obsidian has a very bizarre behaviour: such links are clickable but not recognized as backlinks nor shown in graph view.

Clickable links in HTML comments

I use <!--HTML comments--> instead of %%Obsidian's custom syntax%% for wider compatibility and better legibility, but <!--[[links]] in HTML comments--> aren’t clickable like they are in Obsidian comments (auto-complete works, tho). You can make them clickable by putting <!--%%Obsidian syntax inside the [[link]]-bearing comment%%-->. (I only do this when the comment contains a link, not for every comment.) This only works in single-line comments. A quirk: if you only <!--put the Obsidian syntax…

[CawlinTeffid]

I hadn’t noticed the graph and backlink problems because I don’t use the graph and rarely use backlinks — thanks for pointing those out.