How to prevent example hyperlink to become a real hyperlink?

[Rene Severens]

Hi,

In the current document I am working on, a lot of hyperlink examples are used as well as real hyperlinks.
The hyperlink examples must not be working in the target, which is a PDF, only the real hyperlinks must be working.
Is there a (preferred) way to have the example hyperlinks not converted to real hyperlinks in the target PDF?

Currently I use ";" in stead of ":" in "http://" so "http;//". This is not converted to a real hyperlink. Works also for Word.

Greetings,
Rene Severens

[lacastle]

Have you tried right-clicking on the hyperlink and choosing "Remove Hyperlink"?

[SteveS]

I haven't tried it, but you could try marking the link as code. This is supposed to leave content unchanged.

[NorthEast]

If you don't want them to be links, then don't set them up as hyperlinks in the first place; just use plain text, and format them with a style if required.

[SteveS]

I think the problem might be the distiller is converting the text to hyperlinks during the conversion process. Is that correct?

[NorthEast]

I think the problem might be the distiller is converting the text to hyperlinks during the conversion process. Is that correct?

Ah, I see what you mean.

It doesn't appear to be a Flare issue as the link isn't in the actual PDF file itself, but is added by the Acrobat viewer. In Acrobat, there's a setting in Edit > Preferences, General category, called Create links from URLs.

[Rene Severens]

Hi,

Thanks for all the reactions.

- It is not possible to right-click the text in the xml editor and to mark the example hyperlinks as not a real hyperlink. I have no idea what the process is to convert a text to a hyperlink when creating a PDF target. However it would be nice to have a tag or marker to tell this converter to not convert a specifiek hyperlink.

- Styling the hyperlink as code or using a pre tag does not prevent the hyperlink to become inactive. Even when put the hyperlink between<! [CDATA[...]]> tags, it is rendered as an active hyperlink. However this is not desired because that would require to use the text editor and the intension is to have the co-authors only use the xml editor options.

- If not setting up an example hyperlink then it becomes very hard to explain the users of the application what to enter in the required fields. Experience has learned that without the examples in general several URL 's entered up wrong, resulting in a not operational environment. Since this is in a multi-tier server set-up, the only way to correct this, is to reinstall the software on all servers. (Please note this is not due to the software but to the complexity of the system, a realtime planning application. A reinstallation takes hours...).
- Using the option in Acrobat, results in all hyperlinks not working. However a hyperlink as http://www.microsoft.com/downloads must be active in the document. A simplified hyperlink example like http://<MyServer>/ReportServer must not be triggered. The part <MyServer> must be replaced with the actual servername. Though it is not likely that, if clicked an example hyperlink an existing site will be opened, I want to prevent this from happening anyway. Using http;//www.microsoft.com/downloads does render to a not active hyperlink. (note also the rendering in this editor...).

Greetings,
Rene Severens

[NorthEast]

- Using the option in Acrobat, results in all hyperlinks not working. However a hyperlink as http://www.microsoft.com/downloads must be active in the document. A simplified hyperlink example like http://<MyServer>/ReportServer must not be triggered. The part <MyServer> must be replaced with the actual servername. Though it is not likely that, if clicked an example hyperlink an existing site will be opened, I want to prevent this from happening anyway. Using http;//www.microsoft.com/downloads does render to a not active hyperlink. (note also the rendering in this editor...).

If you de-select that option, it will stop Acrobat from making hyperlinks from your plain text examples. It should not affect any hyperlinks that you inserted in Flare, these will still work fine (I tested this).

However, as you won't have control of whether your readers will have this option selected on their PC, you may have to accept that these links will be there. Since the links are created on-the-fly by the Acrobat viewer, the only way round this would be to 'fool' Acrobat into thinking that they're not links. A quick Google suggests that this is a common issue when producing PDFs.

[LTinker68]

You could always make it a null link, so even if they click on it nothing will happen. You could also create a class of the <a> tag and set the pseudo class styles so there are no color or style changes for the various stages and apply that class to those hyperlinks that you want to appear to be normal text.

[Rene Severens]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips!

I applied the next steps:

Create a text that is to become an inactive hyperlink. It MUST contain "<" and ">" like http://www. < someservername > / bla . (note: i added spaces because this editer will not show the part after www. if left out).

Netx marked this text (in the XML editor) and selected "Create hyperlink". Created a hyperlink to a website using an empty anker "#". Saved. Then marked the text again and selected "Remove Hyperlink". When generated the PDF again the text is not an active hyperlink anymore.

Though this works I am still wondering how this is possible. When left out the "<" and ">" the link is rendered active again.

Greetings,
Rene Severens

[LTinker68]

Though this works I am still wondering how this is possible. When left out the "<" and ">" the link is rendered active again.

If I were to guess, I would say it's built-in recognition of a standard pattern for URLs and the PDF compiler is automatically making it a hyperlink. It's the same thing if I just type http://www.madcapsoftware.com in this post -- I didn't tell it that it's a URL and I don't have the http:// in front of it, but it recognizes that www and .com are key parts of a URL, so it automatically made it a hyperlink. By putting the < and > in it, you're telling it explicitly it's a URL, but you set the parameters of the hyperlink, so it's not going to override what you enter.

That's my guess anyway.

EDIT: Interesting. I didn't enter http:// when I typed the URL above, but when I posted it, the forum software actually inserted it. Perhaps to make it truly compliant. Never noticed that it did that before.

[Rene Severens]

Hi,

When using Flare 8, a hyperlink wil become inactive when it contains "<" and ">". It is no longer needed to create a hyperlink using an empty anker, and remove this hyperlink again.
Mayby this also works in Flare 7 but I did not retest that anymore.

Greetings,
Rene Severens

[Rene Severens]

Hi,

I have created a nice solution, using existing functionality in a creative way. For me, this works perfectly.

I now have a PDF that contains active and "non-active" url's, preventing readers to open a non -existing website/page.

What I did is simple:

1. Enter the URL.
2. Position the cursor in front of the URL and insert a bookmark.
3. Mark the URL and create a hyperlink to the created bookmark.
4. Style the URL, so it has a white background color, a black font and remove the attribute "Underlined", so it looks like default text.
5. Save and generate the PDF.

When a user clickes this URL it will only jump to ... itself, instead of trying to open a non-existing website/page.

Greetings,
Rene Severens