/t5/acrobat-discussions/print-to-pdf-include-hyperlinks/td-p/2965253Oct 05, 2010
Oct 05, 2010
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Apparently the Adobe PDF printer doesn't include hyperlinks due to postscript semantics? I copied text from a webpage to an Open Office doc then printed to pdf to find that the links are still blue and underlined, but their URLs have been lost.
Don't confuse the "apples with the oranges"; the PDF printer (File > Print > Adobe Printer or Print > Select Printer > Adobe Printer) is not the PDFMaker Add-in for Office applications.
Adobe Printer provides "print" similar to a printer driver for a local or network printer. Paper (even "ePaper") has no "interactivity".
PDFMaker provides configuration options that, along with other features, provides an output PDF that can have links.
/t5/acrobat-discussions/print-to-pdf-include-hyperlinks/m-p/2965254#M6481Oct 05, 2010
Oct 05, 2010
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Ah well, whatever. It looks like Open Office has an export to pdf function, which includes hyperlinks. I bet it was a lot of trouble for them to include it.
Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, I'm in a situation where converting to pdf directly from a browser provides undesirable formatting results. Instead I have been copying formatted text from the browser, pasting it in a word processor (with links intact), making minor modifications to the format, then publishing to pdf.
I posted because I was surprised that the functionality wasn't available, and wanted to ensure that this is the case. Fortunately, Open Office has included hyperlink inclusion with PDF publishing through its exporter, so the Adobe PDF printer isn't really needed- at least until I run into some other issue that comes to fruition through the lack of universal semantics inherent of a language like postscript.
/t5/acrobat-discussions/print-to-pdf-include-hyperlinks/m-p/2965257#M6484Jan 18, 2011
Jan 18, 2011
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I'm having a similar problem, but with the Adobe print from my browser - the resulting PDF file does not include functional hyperlinks, just blue underlined text. How do I configure the PDF printer settings such that the links are clickable? Thanks.
Really? Why? For a professional program, that seems pretty ridiculous. If I copy the same text to MS Word, and "Save as" PDF (using Word's native save as PDF ability, not Print to Adobe PDF), the links are clickable. It's not that complicated. . . . what's the problem?
If I'm not mistaken, the PDF Printer is special in that it is a strict PostScript compiler. PostScript is a printing language, meant only for printing, and so the PDF Maker exists. I think it's about preserving the sanctity of PostScript, ensuring that it isn't tainted with other functionality like HTML. Seems silly either way.
Don't confuse the "apples with the oranges"; the PDF printer (File > Print > Adobe Printer or Print > Select Printer > Adobe Printer) is not the PDFMaker Add-in for Office applications.
Adobe Printer provides "print" similar to a printer driver for a local or network printer. Paper (even "ePaper") has no "interactivity".
PDFMaker provides configuration options that, along with other features, provides an output PDF that can have links.
I was not referring to "PDFmaker;" you do not need to own Acrobat or install any plugin to "Save as...." PDF in MS Word 2010. PDF is just one of the available formats one can save a file as in the "Save as" menu.
Paper (even "ePaper") has no "interactivity".
Actually, "ePaper" typically does have "interactivity." That's one of the advantages of it. It also has "metadata" and other "e" features.
If "PDFMaker" can be configured to include links, why can't Adobe Printer?
Like I said, the PDF Printer is special, because it is a "post-script only" printer. That means it has standards, it's like the girl next-door that doesn't mess around with any guys from the east side of town, you can guarantee that she'll only make certain types of babies- and so printing presses can believe in her and know that they will get a foreseable offspring in their printed result, without any crossbread HTML weirdness.
Up through AA8, PDF Maker was a preprocessor for the Adobe PDF printer. The processor added PDF Marks to the printer file so that when it was processed by Distiller, the links would be added. You can still do that with the printer yourself, but you have to figure out how to add the PDF Marks information. It used to be that you could insert a small EPS file in the document that included the PDF Marks and when you printed to the Adobe printer, you would get the desired results. Problem is that you have a lot of work to learn the PDF Marks to do it directly with the printer. The PDF Maker process took care of this for you. I do not know the process that is used in AA9 and AAX, but suspect it is something similar, though not directly using the printer.
Bottom line is that if you want to do it with the printer, you can. However, you have to code it with PDF Marks yourself -- a lot of work.
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