Adobe Community: Message List - Automatic hyperlink creation - properly !

Re: Automatic hyperlink creation - properly !

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 19:55:22 GMT

I am running CS6 in Windows 7 on a 64-bit operating system. I'm converting URLs to Hyperlinks. My files consist of college information data. Here's an example of a URL that does NOT convert right: http://www.anystate.edu/a/business/department/computer-information-technology/. When I export to epub the hyperlink stops before the first hyphen. I get http://www.anystate.edu/a/business/department/computer and the rest is not hyperlinked. I also have URLs that won't convert if there is %20 or /~ in them. And I agree, all URLs should convert and insert http:// in front of them. I have to fix these manually. The only way I know how to speed this up is to "search" in the epub html files for the closing anchor code followed by a hyphen or slash and then cut and paste the text into both the hyperlink and the text. That's tedious! Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm assuming that Adobe has done all they can do.

~Linda

Re: Automatic hyperlink creation - properly !

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:57:13 GMT

Seems I've never noticed the Type > Hyperlinks and Cross-References > Convert URLs to Hyperlinks command. Is that what you are talking about? Apparently that's a behind the scenes GREP find/change query. You might want to look at what the query structure is here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4619499 and write your own that includes the trailing slash, if it exists, and adds the protocol (though I think that might be a bit more of an issue).

Re: Automatic hyperlink creation - properly !

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:45:13 GMT

I was not aware that ID ever recognized or converted text to hyperlinks. As far as I know, that's a function in whatever software is reading the output from ID.

Automatic hyperlink creation - properly !

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:26:22 GMT

For many years/versions, InDesign still carries this bug concerning automatic hyperlink creation.

When using the feature to let InDesign detect web links, the prefix "www." will trigger the automatic conversion to a hyperlink, e.g. "www.adobe.com". However, any proper link (URL) should officially be preceded with "http://", denoting the protocol to be used. The lack of this prefix renders these "web links" not to work properly, not in PDF, nor in ePub, or Folio's.

Another glitch in this feature is the exclusion of any trailing slashes in web links. They are left out of the URL (no big deal), but also miss the obvious application of the desired Character style (e.g. blue, underlined, bold), making the link appear inconsistently styled.

Now, if we would get this automatic detection and manual creation to work properly in Folio's too (the default conversion to those damned Shared Link Destinations still gets in the way – why not make that optional), I'll be a happy man. Well, partially that is, with regards to hyperlinking of course...