RE: PDF Links possible?

[Brian.Henderson@xxxxxxxx]

Hi Patricia,

The technical answer to your question is...yes, there are ways to create
working PDF hyperlinks by embedding markup in the source document. I do
it all the time.

The bad news is, I use $70,000 software (XPP) to do it.

What I don't know (for a fact) is whether you can place markup in an
ordinary text file, run it through any ole converter, and have working
links in your PDF. I believe that it's not possible. I'm pretty sure it
requires software that can embed markup properly into the intervening
Postscript.

Here's a sample of the XPP markup I would use to link to an external
file. These tags are specific to XPP but are very similar to PDFMark,
which is the name of the markup language used within Postscript files:

<:pdfs;2PAGE;1;/File (filename.txt)/Border [0 0 0]>Visible
Text<:pdfe;2PAGE>

A simple net search didn't turn up anything to lead me to believe you
can create links without specialized software.

It looks like LaTex will do it, though.

-Brian


-----Original Message----- From: Patricia M. Godfrey

Is there some way, in preparing a document for subsequent conversion
to PDF (using, of course, XY2PDF) to embed some code analogous to an
HTML XREF one, so that a file so referenced, if in the same directory
or on the same disk as the PDF, could be opened when the code is
clicked on? For example, say FAMHIST.txt (and then famhist.pdf) says,
"here is a picture of our grandfather..." could one then have
grvater.tif somehow set up so that clicking on that would cause
Windows or the Mac to open the file with the associated .tif viewer? I
could, of course, convert the whole thing to HTML, but I'd rather not,
esp. as there are going to be a lot of odd accents. (In fact, I'm
thinking I may have to bite the bullet and try ANSIFIED xy.)
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx