hyperlinks to html files

[Nedlaw]

I am using InDesign to produce a series of documents within a book (step 1 is PDF output). Eventually, I will output these documents separately to html files (with a consistent naming convention) and they will all live in the same directory on a client's server.

I want to place a hyperlink in a document that links to another of the documents -- much like a cross-reference in PDF -- so that when the html is viewed in a browser, clicking the link will open another html document in the set. All html documents will be in the same directory.

Cross-references produce empty hrefs (<a href="">). These would all have to be filled in manually after-the-fact, which would kill maintainability.

In the hyperlink dialog...

• URL - requires a fully-qualified URL (and I can't know where the client will want to put the resulting html files). I have tried entering only the file name, and ID inserts http:// in front of it. There does not seem to be a configuration adjustment where I can change this behavior.
• File - links to a file on a local machine; same problem -- can't know where the client will put the html files.
• Email - is inappropriate.
• Page - will only link to a .indd document -- otherwise this might work.
• Text Anchor - will only link to a .indd document.
• Shared destination -- which the help says will link to any document -- will only link to any .indd document.

For ongoing maintenance reasons, I would like to build these links into the files of the book, not manually doctor them after-the-fact. I would think that ID would have a way to call an html document that is not a fully-qualified URL (and open it in a browser, for instance). The cross-reference produces an href... it just  doesn't populate it.

Are there any suggestions?

-JW

[Nedlaw · Accepted solution]

I may have an answer to my own question (will post if this is so).

The URL hyperlink allows you to enter the name of an html file, but must put http:// in front of the file name. This behavior apparently cannot be changed. (Allowing a non-fully-qualified URL choice would be good, Adobe.)

I know the naming conventions of my files, and the names they will eventually have as html files.

I will set up two text conditions -- PDF and html. The cross-references will be tagged with PDF (and they will show up in PDF output, where they do and will work). I plan to enter a duplicate set of URL hyperlinks to the (eventual) file names and tag them as html.

When dumping the html files, I will turn off the PDF condition and turn on the html condition. The html URLs will export in the form of <a href="http://filename.html">. I plan to use Dreamweaver's directory-wide search and replace to remove the http:// leaving the linked html filename as the href. It's a subtractive solution rather than an additive solution, but I believe it will work and produce html links to html files without forcing me to use a fully qualified URL.

Wish me luck.

-JW

This appears to be a procedure that works, so I'll declare my own question answered. I've written a short article on it, but seem unable to post a link to my blog.