Controlling FrameMaker automatic link generation

[Rick Quatro]

And with FrameMaker 12 regular expressions, it is easier to search for URLs
in the text so you can follow Fred's steps. It is really worth making the
URLs work correctly as links because there is an expectation that links like
these will work in a PDF. As I mentioned, the entire process could be
scripted; this would be beneficial if you have a lot of URLs in the text.

 

Rick

 

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Fred Ridder
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2015 4:14 PM
To: Harding, Dan; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Controlling FrameMaker automatic link generation

 

The hyperlinks you are seeing in the PDF may not actually be there, and they
probably did not come from FrameMaker! For several years, now, Acrobat has
had the feature of inferring hyperlinks from text strings that look like
URLs. But the feature is a little dumb in just the ways you describe (being
unable to properly distinguish surrounding characters from the URL, and not
working on URLs that are broken across more than one line).

The right way to handle URLs in FrameMaker is to explicitly code them as
Hypertext markers of the Go To URL type. The marker contains the actual URL,
which can be different from what appears in the text of the document, and
the "hot-spot" area in the text is delimited by some character format that
you apply to the desired string. (The character format does not need to look
different than the regular text, but it must be applied or else FrameMaker
will treat the entire portion of the paragraph that follows the Hypertext
marker as the active area for the link.)

Then, when you create the PDF from the FrameMaker book, you need to ensure
that the "Include Acrobat Data" option is selected so that the real URL from
the marker will be passed into the PDF.  

It sounds more complicated than it is. The steps I use are:

1.	Select the text that will be the hot-spot. If it's the correct
string for the URL, copy it to the clipboard.
2.	Apply the character format you're using for hyperlinks.
3.	Go to the Hypertext window and choose "Go to URL" from the command
list; "message URL" will appear in the text box.
4.	In the text box, paste (or type) the URL after the pre-populated
string, then click Create Hypertext Marker.

-Fred Ridder



 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers-frameusers.com/attachments/20150402/58bbcd5c/attachment.htm>