A

Anonymous

Question

Spaces in URLs problem w/ new Reader X and XI updates

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
January 11, 2013
11 replies
42885 views

Can anyone else confirm that with the new Reader X and XI updates, spaces in URLs get encoded as %2520 instead of %20 causing errors when the links are followed? This was/is not a problem with the earlier version of X nor with other pdf viewers. I believe that this is a bug.

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

jmpagano

Participant

This may be a font issue--how Acrobat handles system fonts in a Windows environment (basically, it converts spaces and unrecognizable characters into their unicode variant, thereby breaking links).

Please see reply #5 in this thread: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/892168.

The solution worked fine for me.

Good luck.

A

Anonymous

If you are exporting from InDesign, run the script in the second post of this thread:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1016015

It fixes the URL encoding...

L

Laubender

Community Expert

I want to add for all InDesign users around here, that the encoding bug is with:

InDesign CS6 v8.0.0

InDesign CS6 v8.0.1

InDesign CC v9.0.0

No other versions are affected (state of today: 2013 07 23).
Currently there is no official feedback from Adobe when and on what version of InDesign this get fixed.

What exactly is happening when encoding gets wrong?
Here are my assumptions:

Background:

Note: the bug is not in the PDF Export function, but in the Hyperlink Panel of InDesign!

It seems that every URL that is encoded with something like encodeURI() (a global ExtendScript function):

string encodeURI (text: string)
Encodes a string after RFC2396.
Create an UTF-8 ASCII encoded version of this string. The string is converted into UTF-8. Every non-alphanumeric character is encoded as a percent escape character of the form %xx, where xx is the hex value of the character. After the conversion to UTF-8 encoding and escaping, it is guaranteed that the string does not contain characters codes greater than 127. The list of characters not to be encoded is -_.!~*'();/?:@&=+$,#. The method returns false on errors.

To get it back to a working URL we could decode it by "decodeURI()":

string decodeURI (uri: string)
Decodes a string created with encodeURI().

I found a way in InDesign to make it decode with the decodeURI() method in ExtendScript.
Possibly this is also a workaround in Acrobat Pro. I'm not into JavaScript for Acrobat Pro so much, so I cannot say if that would work. JavaScript for Acrobat is a totally different beast compared with ExtendScript.

For InDesign users (CS6 and CC) there are some ExtendScript snippets around that convert the wrong encoded URLs:

1. My initial version at:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4463255#4463255

2. A refined and advanced version of that script by Joe Fugate who found a restriction in my script (internal links in InDesign) and added some reporting:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4826322#4826322

3. A short version by Peter Kahrel at the InDesign scripting forum:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/5479294#5479294

So, back to Acrobat:

Can one list all Acrobat Pro versions where the bug is present?

Here I do not refer to problems that originally stems from PDFs made by InDesign CS6 and CC, but from URLs made in Acrobat Pro.

Personally I do 95% of my Acrobat work still in the older version 9.4.4. I'm not affected.
What I'm not sure about: is the bug still present in 9.5.5, the latest and last installment of Acrobat Pro 9?

Further on: I have also installed Acrobat Pro 10.1.7.

A quick test is showing, that there is no problem with freshly generated URLs.

Thank you all,
Uwe

R

rodrigolzm

Participant

I have the same problem. After use word to convert to pdf (save as) the links don’t work. The Acrobat Reader inserts the characters “25” in the special characters (Latin characters) and space character. Example: Correct URL %20 (word), Incorrect URL %2520 (Acrobat Reader).

OS: Windows 7 – 64bits

Acrobat Reader: Version 10.1.6

The problems was solved after update the Acrobat Reader to 10.1.7 or install the new version 11.0.0.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eu tenho o mesmo problema. Após usar a conversão do Word para PDF (salvar como) os links pararam de funcionar. O Acrobat Reader insere os caracteres “25” nos caracteres especiais (caracteres latinos) e nos espaços. Exemplo: URL Correto %20 (word), URL incorreta %2520 (Acrobat Reader).

SO: Windows 7 – 64bits

Acrobat Reader: Version 10.1.6

O problema foi solucionado após atualizar o Acrobat Reader para a versão 10.1.7 ou instalar a nova versão 11.0.0.

M

mater1ks

Participant

I just updated to 10.1.7, and it too has the problem fixed! This is almost as exciting as winning the lottery!

C

Caveatttt

Participant

This is still a problem in both 10.1.5 and 10.1.6.

I have come across something that may constitute a workaround for this problem. Disabling 'Enable Protected Mode at startup' makes the problem go away.

This is in Edit > Preferences > General in X, and Edit > Preferences > Security (General) in XI.

Of course, I have complete faith in Adobe that this problem will be permanently fixed in 10.1.7 !!

J

JABuc1234

Known Participant

Thank you for this workaround.

Has anyone heard anything about Adobe fixing this? I have encountered a similar problem. I don't have a space in my web links, but a tilde symbol--which Reader converts to %0257, thus breaking the web link. It's very frustrating. (I'm using 11.0.2 Adobe Reader.)

T

thevark1

Participant

This is SO SO stressful.. I have Adobe Acrobat Professional XI and thought everything was fine until I had complaints from our clients that links inside our pdfs were not opening. I finally installed the latest Adobe Reader 11 and experienced Adobe HELL!!!... Jeez.. We have a lot of internal links with spaces (%20) in our pdf's and a huge client base!!! Do I now have to rename all documents with a space in the name and find all the internal links in other documents (hundreds) pointing to them and rename them? Also considering that the documents are made in InDesign and InDesign has its own bugs with hidden and inaccessible code for links (I call them link ghosts)...I'm ready to shoot myself!!

I don't get it.. We pay a lot for this these products, and we keep getting screwed.. Does anyone know of alternatives to Adobe for products like InDesign and Acrobat that actually work? Lately I've been spending hours trying to debug links that won't work because of the InDesign link problems (of which we have been complaining for years and of which Adobe has done nothing). And now this!!

%*%$#($%%$

This is defintiely a problem usign Adobe Reader XI. I've found the issue to occur with spaces and special characters. In our case, we have addresses including '~' characters. This gets covnerted to the cryptic '%xxxx' gibberish. Adobe Reader 9 and Reader 10 do not show this problem. I just confirmed with multiple pc's , using XP and 7, using both IE and FireFox, and using Adobe 9, 10, and XI. XI is the only one which chokes on this.

Is Adobe working on this? It sound slike 'no' from the dialog.

A

Anonymous

By the way, this is an Adobe Reader problem. I have tested the problem with 2 other PDF readers against the same links and the problem does not occur.

G

George_Simon

Participant

I am also facing this issue. When this issue will be corrected?

D

Dasfinc

Participating Frequently

Any update in regards to this Issue?

After contacting your support phoneline I was told I had to pay for a support agreement for you to address it.

I then called your sales team, who was unaware of how to sell me this support agreement.

This needs to be corrected as soon as possible, and has drastically impacted users of our application.

A

Anonymous

We have the same problem and we have the stupid push sending the same version of Adobe regardless if we uninstall and install and old version.

This has been going on for a long time - when will it be fixed?

M

mater1ks

Participant

We have the same problem. My OS is Windows 7 enterprise, Service Pack 1. Problem occurs with Adobe Reader X, version 10.1.5. I created the PDF using Adobe Acrobat X Pro Version 10.1.5. I can open the link on the fillable form using Acrobat Pro just fine, but get the HTTP 400 Bad Request error Request error when I try to open the link with Reader. After reading the previous comments, I checked, and sure enough, the address has a blank, and %2520 was inserted. If I go to the link and delete the 25, it opens fine. I can't ask our staff that only have Reader to delete teh 25, as most of them would not have a clue. When I changed the link on the form to go to amazon.com, it works just fine!

I would like to know when to expect the problem to be fixed as we don't really want to download new, untested software so the link works.

C

Caveatttt

Participant

Any news on this? This is also a problem on our installations - all spaces in URLs are being double-encoded, resulting in %2520's in the link instead of %20's, and a 404 not found. (XP SP3, Reader 10.1.5). I guess this might be fixed in 10.1.6, but when will this be?

I

ianmacg

Participant

Just encountered this issue today. I send out .fdf files as attachments to e-mails. When someone using Outlook attempts to open the fdf file straight from Outlook, it opens it from "C:\....\Temporary Internet Files\...". Adobe then dutifully converts the spaces in the "URL" to %2520, which of course results in a Not Found error on whatever browser tries to open the resulting URL. I've tried googling solutions,but all I've found is to either tell the person to save the fdf file into a path on their computer that contains no spaces, or forums where people say "why would you use spaces in a URL"..to which i say, "I'm not, Microsoft is". As you can see from this example, sometimes it's unavoidable. Adobe, please fix this. Stop double encoding spaces.

I

ianmacg

Participant

BTW, the problem is easy to duplicate. Just copy any valid FDF file into a folder on your desktop titled "This Will Not Work Because This Folder Name Contains Spaces". Then open the FDF file. You'll get the Not Found page from your browser, and note the load of %2520 in the URL:

file:///C:/Users/imacgregor/Desktop/This%2520Will%2520Not%2520Work%2520Because%2520This%2520Folder%2520Name%2520Contains%2520Spaces/application.fdf

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