The current behavior when ctrl+clicking a reference link is it multi-selects the text.

My desired behavior is that ctrl+clicking a reference link navigates to the target of the link. This is currently possible with standard links, but not reference-style links.

My use-case is in tables, where the standard link syntax can have a heavy impact on the width of a cell.

This can almost be simulated with footnote links, which navigate you to the footnote and could be used to include a link, but that is an extra step and extra characters that I find unnecessary.

It occurs to me that links’ ctrl+click functionality does not function in tables in general either, though footnotes does.

Both good points, I’ll try to get that fixed