newlinks and gotolinks in Acrobat

[Shlomo Perets]

Rick,

You wrote:

>A client uncovered a problem that I was previously not aware of. If you
>insert matching newlink and gotolink markers in a document, and you
>Control+Alt+Click on the gotolink marker, FrameMaker will jump to the
>newlink marker as you would expect. However, after you make the PDF, the
>link no longer goes to the location of the named destination created by the
>newlink marker, but it goes to the named destination of the paragraph
>containing the marker. In most cases, you won't notice it, but if the
>paragraph starts on a different page than the marker location, then it
>becomes a problem.
>
>Interestingly, a named destination for the newlink marker is created in the
>PDF, but the link does not point to that destination; it points to the named
>destination for the paragraph, which is at the start of the paragraph.
>
>Frankly, I am dumbfounded by this behavior. I tested it in FrameMaker 8 and
>10 and it works the same. It looks like a case of Adobe trying to "help",
>but for this client, it makes these links unusable in many cases.
>
>If you are having trouble visualizing what I am talking about, you can
>download a sample PDF at
>
>http://www.rickquatro.com/resources/LinkTest.pdf
>
>or a zip file containing both the FrameMaker file and PDF:
>
>http://www.rickquatro.com/resources/LinkTest.zip

The behavior you accurately describe can be indeed seen in the PS file 
created from a FrameMaker file; it is very likely "hard-coded" with no way 
to control or change it in FrameMaker.

If this client uses the FrameMaker-to-Acrobat TimeSavers add-on, a custom 
hypertext marker can link to the specified named destination rather than to 
the automatically-generated paragraph ID.

The following definition should be added to the TS-custom.ini file:

  /~NamedDestLink  %% link to a named destination in the same PDF
       % use: alert ~NamedDestLink /destination
       { TS_LinkProps /A /GoTo /Dest [ }  { (n) ( /Subtype /Link /ANN ) 
TS_Validate  }
   TS-Shortcut  %%%

And then pairs such as the following would achieve the direct linking to 
the destination:
newlink TMS linkname456
alert ~NamedDestLink /linkname456

Ctrl-Alt-clicking the link in FrameMaker will not go to the destination 
(but only display the marker text), but you will see the expected result in 
the PDF.


Shlomo Perets

MicroType, http://www.microtype.com
FrameMaker/TCS training & consulting * FM-to-Acrobat Advanced Techniques * 
FM-to-Acrobat TimeSavers/Assistants