Can I treat a hyperlink as plain text in a PDF output?

[mafra1]

Hello,
I have a sentence (in a topic) containing a hyperlink.
In a PDF output I would like it to come out as pure text, not as a clickable link, just static text.
Is there a way to set this in flare?

see attached image.

BR magnus

NOTE; I do not want to style it like text, I want it to be treated/converted to text (similar to the Advanced settings tab in PDF target for Expanding effects and text popup effects)

[angelabartz]

I had a small project where I had to do the same thing. Here’s what I did (and it’s not pretty).

In the stylesheet, make the cross reference format for print look like normal text.
Add the cross reference twice.
Conditionalize one for print and the other for non-print.
Right-click and remove the cross reference from the print one.

There might be a more elegant way to do this, but I couldn’t figure it out. Thankfully, I didn’t have a lot of cross references.

[Nita Beck]

You can accomplish this by using a condition. Here's the basic procedure.

1. Create a condition tag that you'll use exclusively to handle the hyperlinks that you want to turn into plain text in PDF output. Call it something like "LinkToText".

2. For a hyperlink that you want to turn into plain text, select the entire hyperlink. A quick way to do this is to select the hyperlink block from the span bar at the top of the XML Editor (assuming that you have toggled the "Show Spans" on).

3. Now set the "LinkToText" condition on this hyperlink. In the Condition Tags window, notice the "Exclude Action" options at the bottom left. Select "Unbind". What that will do -- at build time -- is leave the text of the hyperlink but remove the underlying hyperlink code.

4. Repeat this process for all the hyperlinks you want to change to text in the PDF.

5. In your PDF target, be sure to EXCLUDE the "LinkToText" condition. Of course, in your help target, don't exclude that condition, else the hyperlinks will be unbound there, too.

That should do it. HTH.

[mafra1]

Thanks Angela and Nita
I tried the LinktoText condition solution and it worked like a charm.

thanks, magnus