Re: Dead Links and Slow Pages in Acrobat (2)

[Shlomo Perets <shlomo -at- microtype -dot- com>]

Mark,

At 03:49 PM 9/14/99 -0700, you wrote:

>On a (FrameMaker-)related topic ,
..
>The trouble comes when I'd like to link to (already distilled) other
>indexes outside this master index. The following hypertext marker works:
>gotolink OTHERIX:firstpage
>when OTHERIX.PDF is the file name.
>
>What I can't get to work is this hypertext marker:
>gotolink OTHERIX:B
>
>Any suggestions?

(1)
It is difficult to tell whether "gotolink OTHERIX:firstpage" really 
works... 

If Acrobat cannot locate the target file, you get an error message
you cannot avoid ("invalid object specification"). However, when
it can locate the file, but not the destination in that file, 
it displays the default page (usually first) without giving you 
any indication that the destination was not found.

Incidentally, online help for Acrobat 3 - implemented as a set of
interlinked PDFs - had many bad links because of wrong destinations;
relevant files were opened, but always at the default page. 
(The online help for Acrobat 4 is one large file; while there are
no bad links similar to those of the previous version, this approach
causes the Search function to be much less useful than it can).

You can spot such problems only by using a dedicated link checking
utility (I recommend Ari's Link Checker, see http://www.dionis.com).

(2)
The problems you experience are likely to be related to the "unstable"
prefix, inserted by FrameMaker in front of the destination name.

A "newlink B" command is translated to an Acrobat named destination
command with a prefix of "M8.newlink.", thus resulting in an Acrobat
destination named "M8.newlink.B". 

The "gotolink B" is translated to an Acrobat command to jump to 
the named destination with the above prefix.

However, when outputting PS files from a FrameMaker book, another 
item is added to the prefix - a number indicating the position of the
chatper in the book, and thus the named destination could be 
"M2.8.newlink.B" if it is the second chapter, "M12.8.newlink.B" etc.

When FrameMaker writes the PS files for the whole book, it adjusts
the link source and target, resulting in valid links. (There are other
contributing factors which have to with the specific type of your 
link - internal, file to book, book to book). 

Acrobat has no way of making this adjustment as an after-fact. If it
cannot locate the specific destination, the default page is displayed.

(Other approaches are possible, which will result in valid links.
One has to do with your workflow and setup, relying on "native"
FrameMaker commands. Another approach is to insert (once, in FrameMaker)
custom "stable" named destinations, which don't get any prefix,
using cumbersome PS text frames, or regular hypertext markers, in
conjunction with the FrameMaker-to-Acrobat TimeSavers).


Shlomo Perets

MicroType
http://www.microtype.com
FrameMaker-to-Acrobat: TimeSavers / Advanced Techniques Course / Solutions