Cross-References in PDF Output from Framemaker: How to Center Pages?

[ashrae-editor]

I believe I understand well-enough how cross-references work in Framemaker, but one thing that bothers me is how, when generating a PDF from Framemaker and clicking on a cross-reference, the resulting page view locates the cross-reference marker at the very top of a page.

This is very inconvenient and confusing when, say, cross-referencing a figure caption that appears at the bottom of a page. The resulting page view when following such a cross-reference in a PDF centers the text of the _following_ page, with the text of the figure caption barely visible at the top of the page.

My question: Is there a way to construct cross-references such that that the resulting page view, when clicking in a PDF, is centered on the page on which the cross-referenced material appears?

Thanks so much.

JMW

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Not that I'm aware of in FrameMaker.

But in Acrobat, set the Initial View to Single Page instead of Continuous.

File > Properties > Initial View.

Two Up (Facing) and Two Up (Cover Page) would also work.

[ashrae-editor]

Excellent! I thought there might be an Acrobat setting, but I wasn't sure. Thanks, BB.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

IIRC – that’s a user-set setting – you don’t have any control over it from the production side

[dauphinb]

Is it a user-set property? I have always assumed that setting the various Initial View properties to "Default" (which I believe is the default setting!) let the end-user's default settings control, but setting them to anything else overrode the user settings. I hope that's true: I've been (for years) setting all my deliverable PDFs to "Single Page" and "Fit Page" specifically because I want my end users to see whole pages when the open and page through my documents.

[Barb Binder]

Yes, that is correct. Many of us use File > Properties > Initial View (or the corresponding setting in FrameMaker) to set up how the user sees our PDF when they open it. This post is from Acrobat 9, but still valid: https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-acrobat-9-controlling-a-pdf-files-initial-view/ .

[Barb Binder]

Glad you are back on track!

[Cagataytech]

Hi Barb,

This solves the problem up to the point where the end user does not change the page view settings. I would like to know if there is solution in Framemaker which would set the page view to "single page" whenever a link is clicked or maybe even better a cross ref solution which lets us also mark the content above the marker text to be included in the page vierw when its clicked. I looked into the settings and couldn't find anything meaningful.

Using "Hotspots" would be a good solution to this problem but I see that they can't be used as markers or cross ref objects.