Links Don't Work In HTML if Text in Table Cell Goes to a Second Line.

[davidcfrye]

Bug #: 14321

Problem Description: Links Don't Work In HTML if Text in Table Cell Goes to a Second Line. If a table cell has text in it that is linked using a hypertext marker and character tagging AND the text wraps to a second line, when the HTML is generated, the tagged text is not clickable. This doesn't appear to be a problem outside of tables and doesn't appear to be a problem in the PDF version.

Steps to Reproduce: Create a table. Put in a couple of lines worth of text. Select all of the text. Apply a character tag (e.g., Link Blue). Open Hypertext panel, add a link with Go to. Save. Generate HTML5 output using the Publishing module.

Actual Result: The text has the tagging, but is not clickable. PDF copy works fine.

Expected Result: The text should be a clickable link.

Any Workarounds: Break the text into smaller, linked units, using multiple hypertext markers.

It would be great if some of you upvoted the bug. Thanks!

[Bob_Niland]

The Tracker entry says "Put in a couple of lines worth of text.". Does it also brack hypertext if it's a single line that get auto-wrapped?

[davidcfrye]

That was an imprecise way of me saying "put in a lot of text so that it wraps at least once, even better for testing, wraps twice." To clarify, this isn't a wrapping URL that is then linked via hypertext marker. This is standard text that is linked. In our case, it is the exceptionally long names of highly specific medical forms. 

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Is the table the cause (a la https://community.adobe.com/t5/framemaker-discussions/mailto-links-in-tables-don-t-work-in-html/td-p...)?

[davidcfrye]

Yep. Outside the table, no issue. 

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

So the wrapping bit is extraneous to the bug reporting - they're both the same issue - wrapping a link (of whatever type) inside a table destroys the conversion to HTML5.

[davidcfrye]

Due to the difficulty of finding information on the internet about Frame and its various issues, I chose to put these out separately so that they're easily found by someone looking for one, but not the other, or looking by key words used in one but not the other. Theoretically, I might have merged these all with my previous issues like %25 replacing %, ? being converted, etc. all under "HTML5 Conversion Issues." There are, occasionally, reasons why one should avoid consolidation. 

Side note: not all links in tables have issues

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Hmm, if "not all links in tables have issues" then what's the common denominator of the cause? Because if you can't pin it down to what's breaking it, then how the heck are the FM engineers going to fix it?

[Bob_Niland]

re: Side note: not all links in tables have issues

That would be worth a bit more study under the microscope, both to give R&D something to grab onto, and to assist end users with possible work-arounds.

For example, might there be some difference in behaviour for first page of table content vs. auto-continued table content on later pages?

There is something peculiar about Tables. Unless it's been fixed lately, AMP won't trigger on ¶paratags in Tables. I have to manually break long tables into shorter one to work around this.

[davidcfrye]

It's worth noting that I don't work for Adobe. I can report bugs to the best of my ability, but I can't devote unlimited hours to trying to figure out root causes and variations. If the bugs are never fixed, then I'll have to move to a different authoring tool or move away from using Frame for HTML5 generation. 

It's also worth noting that this isn't the first time I've reported issues with HTML, links, and tables. There was the PDF issue where links to URLs ending in .PDF were being converted to relative links in an Assets folder. I don't even know how they managed to fix some of these HTML issues in January, then break it again over the summer. 

To Bob's point, something about tables is different. We have a simple paragraph tag find/replace extendscript we use, but it won't touch anything inside a table. The script was kludged together by a willing volunteer from our tech group, so we don't have an easy fix to see how to handle the tables. But, clearly, tables require something extra; they stand apart in some key way. I believe they're handled as objects, so maybe it boils down to some sort of "container" thing (i'm not a coder, so forgive my terminology). Something with URL/hypertext markers in HTML5 generation is also different. And, I believe hypertext markers are also "objects" and/or "containers." 

This particular issue has a comment added in the tracker that they're working on it. 

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

I've found inconsistencies in behavior when formatting an entire paragraph with a character tag, regardless of whether it's in a table or contains a link. Is the hyperlink the full content of the table cell?

If so, does the link work when the text breaks and no character tag is applied?

If so, since it's a full "paragraph", formatting with a "TableHyperlink" paragraph tag would be a more accurate way of tagging the content.