DEVONthink's 'item link' use the protocol x-devonthink-item:// which allows other apps on the same Mac to open the item in DEVONthink from a URI held in another app, e.g. a Tinderbox note's $URL. It could be any URL-type attribute but $URL should be used if it is intended to auto-fetch the DEVONthink item's content.
The basic link looks like this:
x-devonthink-item://5349A993-377B-4F63-9E43-74317939529B
The long code string is a DEVONThink unique ID for the source asset, whether stored within DEVONthink or just indexed by it.
Customised URLs
The item link URL format also allows several optional forms of suffix to these URLs to further customise the data returned.
'page='. ?page=4. This will open (paginated) documents scrolled to the indicated page. Note however that the index in the URL is zero-based, so page #1 is '0', etc. Thus ?page=4 will open the fifth page of the document (i.e. 0->1->2->3->4). Example:
x-devonthink-item://5349A993-377B-4F63-9E43-74317939529B?page=4
'search='. ?search=Albert Einstein. For text documents, DEVONthink will search the document, highlight all the matches and scroll to the first one. Note that the example given may not work as it is not URL Encoded, better would be to use ?search=Albert%20Einstein. For PDF documents, they must have a text layer, e.g. scans saved as PDFs but not OCR-ed won't work with this method. Example:
x-devonthink-item://5349A993-377B-4F63-9E43-74317939529B?search=Albert%20Einstein
'time='. ?time=80.4. For movies files such as MOV, MP4, this will open the movie at the time code, in seconds, as given. Thus to open a movie at 1 minute 20 seconds, use 80 seconds. Decimals of seconds are allowed. Apparently the method does not work for audio files like MP3, but this may change in due course. Example:
x-devonthink-item://5349A993-377B-4F63-9E43-74317939529B?time=80.65
Whilst the Edit menu and right-click in file listing in DEVONthink will copy a 'bare' item link (i.e. with no special suffix as above), right clicking on display of a partially played movie will add a ?time suffix. Similarly, right clicking the scrolled display of a paginated document will append a ?page suffix.