Re: Coloring hypertext links in PDF

[Richard Inch <rinch -at- INFICON -dot- COM>]

Create a character style named "Link". Keep everythin "AS IS" but set the
color dark blue. Edit all of your cross-references to start with Link and
end with Default ? Font. For example, my references to a Chapter Number
look like:

<Link><$paranum[Heading 1]><Default ? Font>

Also, on your TOC and IX Reference Page, apply "Link" to <$paranum>.

The dark blue prints as black on a BW printer (at least is does on my TI
microLaser Power Pro). But, when you create the PDF all of the TOC, Index,
and cross-reference hyperlinks display in dark blue, which is easy to see
but does not "overwhelm" the reader.

Richard Inch
Techncial Documentation Manager
Leybold Inficon
Two Technology Place
East Syracuse, NY 13057-9714





ron -dot- rothbart -at- DOCUMENTUM -dot- COM on 03/11/98 04:35:43 AM

Please respond to ron -dot- rothbart -at- DOCUMENTUM -dot- COM

To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
cc:    (bcc: Richard L Inch/Leybold)
Subject:  Coloring hypertext links in PDF




Can anyone recommend a way to automatically display all the existing
hyperlinks in a PDF document in a specified color, that is, without
coloring
them
in the FrameMaker source document (and thus the PostScript file) and
without
having to manually color each item of hypertext, one at a time, in Acrobat
Exchange? Perhaps there's an Adobe Acrobat plug-in that does this?
Here's the scenario:
We currently produce our product documentation in hard copy and in PDF. We
use Frame 5.5 to create our books, then print them to PostScript files and
use Acrobat Distiller to create the PDF files.
Because we use the same PostScript files for both our hard-copy and PDF
documentation, we'd like to display the hypertext links in our PDF files as
color in a post-production step. That way, the hypertext color won't print
in our
hard-copy docs.
Ideally, we would like to be able to color the index entries,
cross-references,
and other hypertext links, then distribute the PDF documentation to our
customers without requiring that they have any additional plug-ins
installed on their systems to view the colored hypertext links.
A phone call to Adobe was mostly fruitless-- the Marketing and Tech Support
folks I spoke with said that Acrobat Exchange and Distiller did not
currently have the features we wanted, and they didn't know of any products
that might meet our needs.