Why typesetting file path not working?

Question

I know this How to typeset a file path? I think that the PATH command works like making possible to use shorter PATH in URLs. I have documents in my filesystem which I often include in my notes. I would like to assign their folder location by the path -command. However, I am not sure if I use the right function because of unexpected result below.

Code

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[obeyspaces]{url}
\begin{document}

\path{/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases}

\url{PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf} 

\end{document}

Output:

/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases

PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf 

Expected output:

/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases/PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf

2nd example having pseudocode

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[obeyspaces]{url}
\begin{document}

\somePathCommand{/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases}

\someHrefCommand{PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf}{Diabetes Guideline}

\end{document}

which should print the link Diabetes Guideline i.e. having redirection to:

/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases/PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf

How can you typeset correctly the file path? I.e. use it with images, and do not print the actual path in the document as text.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I fully understand your objective. I can offer the following observations:

• The url package defines \path as an "alias" for \url. Using \path may be more mnemonic than using \url if the argument is the name of a "path" rather than an ordinary URL.

• There's one important difference, though, between \url and \path: If the hyperref package is loaded, the argument of a \url instruction will be made into a hyperlink, whereas that's not the case with \path.

• If the path/url is a long and unwieldy string, and if you wish to show just a short stub instead, be sure to load the hyperref package and to use that package's \href macro. This macro takes two arguments: (i) a URL-like string, and (ii) the "stub" that should be shown in the pdf file instead of the URL-like string.

% !TEX TS-program = xelatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage[spaces,obeyspaces]{url}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,allcolors=blue]{hyperref}
\setlength\parindent{0pt} % just for this example
\begin{document}
output of \verb+\path+:

\path{/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases/PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf}

\bigskip
output of \verb+\url+:

\url{/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases/PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf}

\bigskip
output of \verb+\href+:

\href{/Users/masi/Dropbox/Internal Diseases/PubMed Central, Table 3_ Diabetes Care. 2010 Jan; 33(Suppl 1)_ S62–S69. doi_  10.pdf}{stub}
\end{document}