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hypertext message URL syntax is being changed by FM

Forum|Forum|8 days ago
March 23, 2026
5 Antworten
58 Ansichten

I am running into a problem with my hypertext entries (used to open a video-file on the same computer the PDF/link is clicked) that I cannot find any information about on the web.

The problem is that no matter what type of hypertext command I try (message URL, message opennew, message openfile, etc.) the actual syntax of my hypertext is getting changed by FM when I click the <save> button.

For example: the hypertext command I type in is "//D:/data/local/Test-Folder/OnlineHelpFiles/filename.mp4"...is being changed to something with unicode characters for the colon “ : “and the "/O" in the file path. This change occurs no matter if I put the URL in quotes or use the 'escape reserved characters' technique.

Any guidance is appreciated…

Beste Antwort von Robbie19

thanks everyone for the advice. fortunately i found the cure…

Hypertext ‘Message Client’ was the correct hypertext option to use and ‘message openfile D:/directory/filename.ext’ was the correct syntax. using this option, the syntax of the message does not get modified like it was when using ‘message URL...’ so everything is working as expected now.

R

Robbie19AutorAntwort

Inspiring

thanks everyone for the advice. fortunately i found the cure…

Hypertext ‘Message Client’ was the correct hypertext option to use and ‘message openfile D:/directory/filename.ext’ was the correct syntax. using this option, the syntax of the message does not get modified like it was when using ‘message URL...’ so everything is working as expected now.

- rw

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

Robbie19: message openfile D:/directory/filename.ext

Where the document and the target file always share the same relative directory locations (and esp. when they are to be served on the web), I would expect file-relative path notation to work, e.g.:
message openfile ../assets/filename.ext

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

So you have a requirement that the PDFs and the video files all have the same Windows user names and/or path names?

I would imagine that serving the PDFs and videos on a server would simplify things.

However, if you do have control over filename and location on the destination computers, try using relative (rather than absolute) addresses in your hyperlinks to navigate to the videos.

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

What version of FM are you seeing this happening in? If you make a link to some external video on YouTube, is it working then?

W

Winfried Reng

Community Expert

Hi,

Can you post here the full command(s) which you insert?

I use only “Go to UrL”, and I had not noticed any character changes yet.

Yes, as Bob said, when a URL add https:// at the beginning.

Best regards, Winfried

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

I’ve never tried do that for media files, and haven’t done it in years for PDF (but it worked then). I was not able to get a .mp3 link to work yet, but in trying it, I observed that:

The path delimiters probably need to be Unix-like forward-slashes (/) and not Windows-like back-slashes (\) as they can be interpreted as FM escape commands, and indeed I watched \\\b get turned into \\• upon [Update]. If \ₓ is not a valid FM special, both the \ and the following character are deleted.
The “quotes” don’t appear to be necessary, and in my tests resulted in the local document path being prepended to the intended path.
It may be necessary to prepend the
URI Scheme file:// or file:///
if you haven’t already tried that.

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