Links between FM-generated PDF files work intermittently

Report · Jun 20, 2012

I have recently converted our documentation set (about 700 FM files in 50+ books) from FrameMaker 7 to FrameMaker 10. The documentation set has an index page with links to each of the books, which is implemented as a cross-reference to the first page of the first document in the book. The PDF files are generated by opening all the books, and the Index document, then printing each book to the Adobe PDF printer, and the Index document.

When I open the Index document in Adobe Reader, clicking the links to each of the manuals works intermittently. I can click on a link to one PDF file, and the file is displayed. Later, after clicking on other links, I can click on the same link and the PDF is not displayed.

I suspect that this problem might be due to the conversion process, but I am having a hard time finding any information on it. I seem to remember that there was a discussion in this forum about this problem, which I saw some time ago when we were evaluating FM10, but now I cannot find it. IIRC, the solution was to create new FM books for each of the files. I have not tried that yet - I thought I would ask first before spending several hours creating the new books. If anyone has any suggestions to make, or can point me to information on FM7 to FM10 conversion issues, I would greatly appreciate it.

BTW, I'm using unstructured FM, running on Windows XP and Windows Server 2008.

Ken Dyall.

Report · Jun 20, 2012

Since you are only interested in opening the first page of the external PDF, and not in going to a named destination within it, you might try implementing the links as hypertext markers, rather than cross-references.

If the HT markers encounter the same unreliability, that sounds more like a PDF reader problem.

Links from FM-authored documents to named destinations in external PDFs seem to generally require either aftermarket tools (such as MicroType's), or hacking in Acrobat Pro.

Report · Jun 20, 2012

That's a possibility, though we have lots of cross-document links to paragraphs in other documents. I could consider using HT markers, which I do use a bit.

I've been doing a bit more checking, and it looks like this could be a problem with Adobe Reader. I've been using Reader 9.4.6 for my testing, and this is the version that showed the intermittent link failure. Using Reader 10 or Acrobat 10 showed no problems with the links.

Ken.

Report · Jun 21, 2012

From a search of the Adobe Reader forum, it appears that this problem is a bug in Adobe Reader on Linux that has been around since Reader 8, and hasn't been fixed.

Report · Jun 21, 2012

> ... bug in Adobe Reader on Linux that has been around since Reader 8, and hasn't been fixed.

And probably won't be, given that Adobe no longer supports Linux, unless you spell it Android.