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C
cvgs
Inspiring
April 23, 2009
Question

Broken links when PDFing Structured FM 8 in Windows XP

  • April 23, 2009
  • 3 replies
  • 2885 views

We have a large number of links in our documents that are created using structured Framemaker 8.0 in a Windows XP environment. The xrefs work fine in FM, but once they have been PDF'd all of the links are broken. Since these are large documents, it can take over a day to relink everything.  All links are created using the fm-xref tag and link to other topics/items within the FM book.

Any suggestions for what may be the problem?

I am also posting this in the Acrobat forum.

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

A
Anonymous
April 23, 2009

I had this problem a while ago.

I think you have to switch on the "Create Named Destinations for All Elements and Paragraphs" option on the Links tab of the PDF print options in FM8.

R
Russ Ward
Brainiac
April 23, 2009

The creation of a named destination for a cross-reference target should be automatic. If you really do have to force named destinations for all paragraphs, I'd say this is an unsettling bug.

C
cvgsAuthor
Inspiring
April 29, 2009

I am a little confused as to when exactly the links stop working. In your initial post, you said it happened when you created a PDF. Then in your last post you describe the step "A book is then created and all ditamaps are created as chapters within the book." How are you creating the book? Are you using the DITA-FMx plugin or the default FrameMaker support? If fm-xref elements are being turned into xref elements when you open a file, that may be an indication that the round-tripping of your topic files is not working correctly, but that's a separate issue really. So could you be a bit more specific about the steps you are going through and your environment?


Ok, Nigel, this is what we have observed:

  1. Using FM Dita, we create an xml file which has an fm-xref.
  2. We save and close the file.
  3. The file is then added to a ditamap.
  4. We then generate a book file from all of the ditamaps that will be in our project.
  5. When we open up a chapter within the book file, and notice that some of the fm-xrefs have been changed to xrefs.  The ones that we notice being changed are those that reference headings, as opposed to cross-referencing to a figure.
  6. If we click on the elevator button on the right, before our eyes, the x-refs change back to fm-xrefs.
  7. We save the file again.
  8. Having been lulled into a false sense of security, we then generate a pdf.  None of the fm-xrefs that had been changed into xrefs and then back again work as links, so we must manually relink within the pdf.

We have checked our source files, and they very clearly display an fm-xref tag.

We recently added the 8.13 patch and we think that it may be a problem related to that patch, since we have never had this problem before.

Hope this gives you enough detail.

Thanks.

R
Russ Ward
Brainiac
April 23, 2009

cvgs,

Are you generating the PDF at the book level? If so, all inter-book links should work, barring any strange things that might be caused by the DITA app. What error does the link give you in Acrobat?

I hope you get some of these issues worked out. It really sounds to me that you are missing out on some of the primary benefits of FrameMaker as a desktop publisher for long documents. If you can't find some resolution to these problems you've encountered, I'd recommend that you consider other DITA applications for authoring and/or publishing content. If you want to stick with FM, you might also consider abandoning DITA for a less complex structured workflow. Unless you really need compliance with DITA, you can get many of its important features without it.

Russ

Arnis Gubins
Arnis Gubins
Inspiring
April 23, 2009

If the links work fine in the FM book, then I would suspect that the PDF files have either been renamed or moved to a different location and relative paths are now munged.

To check what is going on in the PDF, in Acrobat using the Link tool, examine the Properties of some of the broken links (and from that panel you have to click the Edit button to see actual details) in order to find out where exactly the link is trying to go to.

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