SUGGESTION
When a title is given in a reference link, display the title in lieu of the label in rendered text.
If rejected as a standard behaviour, then could this be a CLI option?
EXAMPLE
[mylabel]: https://example.com "Some title" {.external}
Output
Some title rather than
my label.
MOTIVATION
Reference links allow for reusability of links. The denomination (or title) associated with the link differs from one context to another. A typical example is when referencing multiple URLs that pertain to a same subject. Giving a consistent naming convention, that provides both a visually pleasant and compliant to regular writing conventions in whatever language your Markdown text is written, can be quite challenging.
As an example, I often keep track of software I am interested in. I have, within a same Markdown document, a table where I keep track of home pages, GitHub repository, latest release, etc. Elsewhere is the Markdown document I may discuss a given software, sometimes referring to its home page, and sometimes referring to its GitHub repository. Take the example of Pandoc:
[pandoc-ws]: https://pandoc.org "Pandoc"
[pandoc-gh]: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc "Pandoc"
Displaying
pandoc-gb and
pandow-ws in my tables and in the body of my text is clumsy. Using variations like
Pandoc (homepage) and
Pandoc (github) remains clumsy. Redefining the reference link is even more clumsy; reference links are here for reuse not redefinition. With the proposed approach I can consistently say
Pandoc for Pandoc's website or
Pandoc for Pandoc's GitHub repository depending of the context in which I am.
Implementing an even more flexible solution where the title can be assigned at each invocation of the reference link would be ideal. But that probably has deeper repercussions on the Markdown syntax.