Broken TOC Links

[frameexpert]

Occasionally Framers will complain about TOC links being broken in the resulting PDF. This is actually by "design"; when there is a character property change in the paragraph, the link will not extend beyond the change. Here is a snippet from the FrameMaker 2019 help:

That is why you see this in your PDF (links are indicated by the rectangles):

My solution is simple: it is a script that simply duplicates the Hypertext marker in each paragraph where ever there is a character property change. This is how it will appear in the PDF:

Each rectangle is a separate link, but of course they all go to the same destination. If you are interested in a scripting solution like this, please contact me offlist. If I get enough interest, I may release it as an off-the-shelf solution. Thanks! rick at frameexpert dot com

[Bob_Niland]

There are a couple of other hacks that are sometimes available, but they might not work for the example above.

For a recent project, I just put up with the scrappy TOC until the book content was stable, then converted the {short} TOC to a non-generated file, with manually-applied Xrefs.

A more generalized solution is long overdue, and if I were still in a production environment, a PO for the script would be forthcoming.

By the way, how does this legacy TOC artifact flow to HTML output, and if links there are similarly truncated, does the offered script also patch that workflow?

[frameexpert]

Hi Bob, I haven't tested this with HTML output, but since it "fixes" the FrameMaker generated file, it should pass through to the HTML output.

[shmuel67]

This was a very bad decision to have this "functionality." I'm trully amazed that they would think this is a good feature. Having lots of partially broken links in my PDF is not worth whatever they think they are gaining in terms of functionalty.

If they really think this is such an important feature, they could at least put in an option to opt out of this feature, and not have broken links. If they make this one change, I'm going to ask my company to pay for a new version, which I haven't done in years.

[Bob_Niland]

re: This was a very bad decision to have this "functionality."

My impression has always been that it was an attempt to avoid requiring separate markers for start and end of target region.
Saved a click.
Came at some largely hidden cost.
And it's been this way for perhaps 3 decades now, so odds of enhancement might not be high.

[shmuel67]

Now that we know it's a feature, not just a bug, people can complain about it and maybe they will change it. It's probably easier to change a feature than a bug.