Idea Delivered

This is being delivered in XPP 9.4.

Direct PDF: add option to create pdf with bookmark and links only

In the PDF/UA effort CSS properties for creating bookmarks and links.
This makes creating bookmarks and links a lot easier than through the old pdfmarks.

Unfortunately you can only create a pdf with those bookmarks and links active when using the -pdfua option.
This has 2 serious downsides:

  1. you need to add the necessary pdf ua properties to your stylesheet or divpdf will not run when you add the -pdfua option
  2. you can no longer print a partial division with active links since the -pdfua option forces you to print the complete division.

For all these and many other reasons, it would be most helpful to add another option to divpdf that allows you to create a pdf with active bookmarks and links but without using the full blown -pdfua option.

Bart Terryn
  • in reply to Steve Piercey

    That is great news!
    9.4 will be an awesome release, packed with a lot of goodies!

  • The backlog is just the place where things go, when they are scheduled without a time frame. It means we are committed to do the feature, but the functionality has not been assigned to a particular release. It is not a "graveyard" where things go to die. In "agile" terms, the backlog log is where stories go to be subsequently assigned to a sprint. 

    In the case of this particular feature, it is currently in development and will be included in XPP 9.4. The idea is too good to waste, and it makes such an easy way of doing bookmarks and annotations/links for XML and XML/CSS Divisions, A couple of CSS selectors and you have bookmarks without having to compose macros/processing instructions/XyPERL into the content. How good is that?

  • I do not understand why this is moved to the backlog again.

    Creating bookmarks and links has nothing to do with creating PDF/UA files.
    One should be able to use Direct PDF to create a PDF with just links and bookmarks by just using CSS properties.
    What am I missing here that this is no longer considered to be an urgent requirement?
    Is there another way to do this??? (and I do not want to hear: use pdfmarks) 

  • Well, until the issue will be resolved in the future, how do you sort this out so far? Unless using -pdfua exactly. I'm trying to handle this manually, edititng the pdf's with other form writing tools like this https://w9.pdffiller.com it works out this way yet I think there's no need to explain what the shrtcomings of such a method are. At least, the whole process is slow as hell done in that fashion