FM10/Acrobat X 10-use named destinations for PDF linking

Report · Aug 22, 2012

My company wants our documentation to be accessible from a web page. No problem there. But they want to provide users with links that open the PDF files to a specific section.

My books are in FM10. I created hypertext named destinations (example hyperlink syntax: newlink alarm) at the points where they want to open the PDF. I then saved the book to PDF, with the Create Named Destinations for All Paragraphs check box selected.

We are now trying to build a link from the web page to open the PDF at the named destination. Here is some info from the web developer on his syntax:

These zoom but do not position you to the named destination:

This positions to the indicated page and zooms:

<a href="Documentation/IO.OS 2.1.3 Technical Overview.pdf#page=20&zoom=40">Tech Doc</a>

What are we doing wrong? I've been searching the forums and community help and we've tried all the syntax examples we can find. Thanks so much for any help you can provide!

Report · Aug 22, 2012

But they want to provide users with links that open the PDF files to a specific section

Do you mean,they want the PDF to opened at a particular page ?

Report · Aug 22, 2012

No, not a page, although that's the only thing we can get to work. What they really want is to open to a PDF bookmark, but named destination would also work. (I created the named destinations for each H1 heading in the FM files.) He can open the PDF to a page but the problem with that is we'll need to recode the links for each release as we add and remove content and stuff moves to different pages. That's a real pain and very timeconsuming for a large doc set.

Report · Aug 22, 2012

If you need to open the PDF at a bookmark your developer has to use :-

pagemode=bookmarks name

pagemode=thumbs

pagemode=none (default)

Whatever applies.......

Example

try this out and check if thats working?

Report · Aug 22, 2012

If the wan to use nameddest...you have to perform these steps within a PDF with acrobat

Manually navigate through the PDF for the desired location
Go to View > Navigation Tabs > Destinations
Under Options, choose Scan Document
Once this is completed, select New Destination from the Options menu and enter an appropriate name (similar as Framemaker)

Report · Aug 23, 2012

Thanks for your help, everyone. Someone on the Acrobat forum sent me Adobe's Parameters for Opening PDF Files document which contained the commands provided by Harpreet. I've passed that on to the web developer and we'll see what happens when he tries the bookmark command, which is really what we want to do.

In my version of Acrobat X (Std), I don't have the View > Navigation Tabs > Destination option, so I suspect it's only in the Pro version. I'm waiting for the Pro version now and hope it gets here soon as there are other features I could really use.

I'll post later and let you know if the linking is working. Thanks again!

Report · Aug 23, 2012

We were only able to get this to work once we could see the named destinations in Acrobat (the developer brought his home laptop which had the Pro version). The issue is that the destinations created in the FM files are not named as expected. Instead they are prefaced by some alphanumerics. Now that we know what they actually are, the linking to the FM named destinations is working (oddly, named destinations added in the PDF do not work). Now we'd like to know what the alphanumerics stand for. Each link starts with M#.#.newlink.<named dest>. The # doesn't seem to relate to chap number or page number or the order in which they were entered or anything we can figure out. I appreciate your insights into the naming!

Report · Aug 23, 2012

# and & and used to start a a new tag so what my assumption would be to remove the # and straight away use like M.newlink<nameddest>.

Report · Aug 24, 2012

Hi Kim,

As you've noticed, FM automatically prepends the M#.8 to your "newlink" marker entries. The number (#) increases based upon the file posittion in the book when creating a single PDF output from a book. If you create just output from single files, then FM uses the "M8.newlink" format.

So if you hardcode your external links to the FM created PDF destinations, you may run into maintenance issues if you ever add/remove or re-arrange the files in a book. However, there is a way around this using Shlomo Perets TimeSavers utilities. He has "Convert newlink markers" option in his toolkit (see Links/General panel) that will force the prepended content to be removed when creating the PDFs, so your named destination targets will not be location dependent based upon their position in a book file.

I highly recommend checking this tool out. Please see: http://www.microtype.com/TimeSavers.html

Report · Aug 29, 2012

Hi Kim,

Our team recently found a way to put custom named destinations in our FrameMaker files that can be used for linking to specific places in the PDF output (with no strange alphanumeric codes added to the named destinations).

The named destinations are anchored in FM so they stay with whatever heading/text/graphic/etc they are "attached" to, even as content is added to/removed from the FM files.

Will the following work as part of the solution you're looking for? (We're also using FM10 and Acrobat X.)

In FM, insert a new text frame object.
Type the following code in the text frame: [/Dest /Help123/Dest pdfmark

where “Help123” is the name that will appear in the PDF for this named destination. This is name you would use in your hyperlinks. Our programmers use this name for the context-sensitive help links in the user interface.
Right-click on the text frame and select Object Properties. Click to select the PostScript Code check box, then click the Set button.

NOTE: Once the PostScript Code check box is selected, the text in the text frame cannot be edited. To edit the text in the text frame, you have to first turn off the PostScript Code option, edit the text, and then turn the PostScript Code option back on.
Select the text frame object, then cut and paste to create a new instance of it. This places the text frame inside an anchored frame.
You can now “attach” the anchored frame to whatever heading/figure/text/etc the named destination should link to.

Here's the catch. To get the named destination in the PDF output, you can’t use the “Save as PDF” command in FM – you must print to PDF instead:

In the FM file, click File >> Print Setup.
Select Adobe PDF in the Name drop-down list, then click the Properties button.
Deselect the Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts check box, then click OK.
Click OK.
Click File >> Print.
Select the Generate Acrobat Data check box.
Click the PDF Setup button to define bookmark links, print quality, etc, then click the Set button when done.
Click the Print button.

The generated PDF file should contain all the bookmarks you’ve defined as well as all the named destinations you added (with the exact names you specified).

Hope that helps. Thanks, and good luck,

Jason

Report · Aug 29, 2012

Thanks, Jason. This sounds like a good option, with most of the work on my side to get it set up. The web developer wants to avoid the rework of redoing the docs web page with new links due to FM changing the marker names. I'll pass this info along to him. He's working on other projects, so it may be a while until I can report more on our progress.

Report · Sep 04, 2012

Jason, I tried your suggestion to create the postscript codes for the named destinations and then printed to PDF as indicated. This created a .ps file which I ran through Distiller (the Acrobat X Standard version). The resulting PDF doesn't have the named destinations.

I installed Acrobat X Pro this am and tried again to print to PDF. I received several odd FM messages telling me I need Distiller 5.05 or greater (I have v10.1.438 installed) and that PDF job options aren't defined. The only option available in the drop-down is High-Quality Print. All others are missing. I tried going into Distiller and creating one based on Standard called KC_IO. I can't see or choose it either in FM. I uninstalled FrameMaker and reinstalled it. And then I tried to print to PDF again with no change. And I am unable to save any of my other books (that don't need the special destinations) as PDF. I am also unable to open Distiller to edit or create additional job options or process a .ps file.

I'm thinking something has gone wrong with the Acrobat X Pro install so I'm reaching out to Adobe support.

Report · Sep 04, 2012

> ... so I'm reaching out to Adobe support.

I trust you've done that via other channels, as this forum is user-to-user and not Adobe Support.

Adobe people only show up here sporadically.

Report · Sep 04, 2012

of course, through other channels. When exploring the Acrobat installation forum, noticed there was an update. I installed it and my job options have returned. So now I'm back to trying to figure out why Jason Nichols' instructions didn't work for me.

Report · Sep 04, 2012

Hi Kim,

Yikes! I'm sorry to hear about the issues you ran into. I went back and tested my own steps just now to make sure they worked for me -- they did, but I did notice that all of our pdfmark codes were actually in this format: [/Dest /Help123/DEST pdfmark

I thought I had verified before that this code was not case-sensitive, but when I tested it just now, [/Dest /Help123/DEST pdfmark worked but [/Dest /Help123/Dest pdfmark did not.

However, I did not receive any error messages or find PDF options not available for me -- it's just that the named destination that was defined using the [/Dest /Help123/Dest pdfmark format simply didn't appear in the generated PDF. So I don't know if this addresses the issues you're encountering?

Either way, many apologies for the oversight. In case it matters, I am running Acrobat X Pro (v10.1.4) and Distiller X Pro (v10.1.438) (on Windows 7 64-bit). I'm not aware of any special FM or Acrobat scripts or plug-ins that we're running.

I should mention that this was something we discovered mostly through our own research and testing -- not through Adobe support.

For what it's worth, a couple of us have tested this procedure on 2 or 3 book files now, and it seems to be working well. If I find any other settings that might be unique to our setup, I will be sure to post an update here.

Hope that helps,

Jason Nichols

Report · Sep 04, 2012

Hi, Jason. I was just about to post that I had discovered the same thing when I reviewed the pdfmark reference document. Once I fixed the case on my codes, all the destinations appeared in the PDF output. There was much rejoicing! I'm handing the new PDF over to the developer for testing, and I expect it to be successful.

This makes you wonder why FrameMaker renames all actual named destinations if you add new ones (or delete). Why is it considered OK to do this, knowing it's gonna break links to these destinations? No one should have to use postscript codes to work around this problem. I view this renaming as a bug and sure would like to see it fixed in an update. I'm off to find out where to report this and request a fix.

Thanks, again, Jason, for your help with my linking challenge. I'll be marking your latest reply as the Correct Helpful Answer.

Report · Sep 04, 2012

Kim,

It's been like that (prepending the codes), by design, since day one. It's not a bug. This is to prevent valid newlink commands in files, when combined into a book or as cross-book links, to become duplicates, i.e. ensures uniqueness.

For more (gory) details about using pdfmark commands in FM files, you can see this freebie chapter exerpt from Thomas Merz's classic book: http://www.pdflib.com/fileadmin/pdflib/pdf/pdfmark_primer.pdf

The only caveat with using the PS frames approach is that maintenance may become an issue, especially in a multi-author environment. The TimeSavers utilities make it easier & faster by keeping the links as markers. You can even insert your own custom pdfmark codes for other purposes within markers and then manage them using available FM marker tools.

FWIW, it's the postscript that is case-sensitive and has no relation to the operating system.

Report · Sep 04, 2012

Thanks for the helpful link, Arnis. It will surely come in handy because I've learned that my company wants to create named destinations in several PDF documents so we can link from the apps to them in lieu of implementing online Help.

I'm going to check out the TimeSaver utilities. I'd appreciate further info on the maintenance issues you mentioned so I can use that info as ammunition for purchasing the utilities.

Report · Sep 05, 2012

Hi Kim,

The biggest issue will simply be dealing with postscript text frames. As Jason points out, you can't edit the text when a text frame is in the postscript mode. Also, you can't search for any of the contents of a postscript text frame, so finding and editing content is not going to be that easy (compare this to working with marker content). Then, it's a matter of where you place the text frame and your expectations of what a "target" location will show when a link is made to it. If you have many targets on a page, then you will have quite a number of these PS text frames visible and it may obscure content.

An alternative approach might be to use custom EPS files (containing the pdfmark code a la the Merz book) named for the respective destination. You can then import these as graphics (make them very small) and it will be less cluttered. The link content can then be maintained externally and you can use FM's find tool or List of References for maintenance purposes. You could set up an automated routine in a spreadsheet to generate these EPS files for you, which would also provide management capabilities for your destinations when working with developers.

Note: you also *can* create PDFs with PS text-frames and pdfmarks using the Save As PDF route, as long as you are in the RGB mode. The Print route with Generate Acrobat Data and Save As PDF in RGB mode are identical, except one requires you do do the manual steps.

Report · Mar 10, 2014

Thanks to all of you posting this thread. I've been trying to avoid using a third party tool for this purpose. One thing I found was that printing the book would cause FM 11 to crash, consistently, but I did find that Arnis' save as RGB works just fine. The book outputs the markers as desired.

So appreciative to all of you for posting this information!

Report · Mar 10, 2014

@starrd – the Print Book to PDF crash in FM11 & 12 has been fixed in the first patches to each.

Report · Mar 10, 2014

Sir Coatsworth is correct!

I failed to patch since FM has been so stable for me. Just loaded patch 1, happily works, then patch 2, still happily works. Again, so grateful for this forum group.

Report · Sep 04, 2012

* I thought I had verified before that this code was not case-sensitive, but when I tested it just now, [/Dest /Help123/DEST pdfmark worked but [/Dest /Help123/Dest pdfmark did not.

Just a wild thought about some versions of some OSs having the ability to be case-sensitive in path and file names. I'm not sure which, if any, applications honor or ignore such OS settings. Were your successful and failed tests on the same machine?

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Report · Sep 04, 2012

FYI - All of my successful tests were on a Windows 7 machine running FrameMaker 10.0.1.408 and Acrobat X Pro 10.1.4.

Adobe Community

FM10/Acrobat X 10-use named destinations for PDF linking