Script for checking links

[Shlomo Perets]

Tamsin,

You wrote:

>We'd like to automate the task of checking cross-reference links either
>within our Framemaker source files or in the generated PDFs. Does anyone
>know of a good script that will check cross-reference links. Or a
>reputable script service provider? It's very time consuming to try to
>click on each link in our vast documentation suite. However, we have
>noticed that from time to time the cross-references break.

Testing the links in PDFs (rather than in FM) is recommended, as they may 
be functional in FrameMaker but damaged during the conversion to PDF. There 
may be various reasons, but a common reason for random bad links is having 
"Create Named Destinations for All Paragraphs" turned off in FrameMaker's 
PDF setup, Links tab.

I recommend PDF Linker (previously ARTS Link Checker, and before that Ari's 
Link Checker from Dionis). I provide a license for ARTS PDF Linker plug-in 
as part of the course materials in my Testing PDFs and 
FrameMaker-to-Acrobat Advanced Techniques courses.

The only other option I know of: if you happen to already have the 
Acrobat/Compose set of tools, there is an Auditor function that may also 
help you identify bad links (I haven't tried it with recent versions of 
Acrobat; this set of tools was not updated in recent years and some parts 
of it are not compatible with Acrobat 6/7).


Shlomo Perets

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