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“Show Hyperlinks” Missing!


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This is a bug. Really. It doesn’t suffice to only provide the option of showing anchors in a document. We must have the option to show hyperlinks as well. How can we otherwise control the length of a string a link is assigned to? O.o

Recently, I exported a document to PDF, and I wondered why some of my links weren’t working anymore. Until I discovered that doing some search and replace in the document had changed the lengths of the strings these hyperlinks were assigned to. I might cover that topic in another bug report, but for the moment, this little episode should make it evident that we need a way to highlight hyperlinks. And not based on a character style! There must be some sort of frame around these links, that can be switched on and off. Ideally, we should be able to adjust the frame after having created the link. See below.

In any case, please add a Show Hyperlinks option to Text > Interactive.

Thank you, Alex :)

 

Hyper.png.056dd05e4bc276344199bb689d804ed7.png

Draggable.png.6c90696ade20c97f08e04b7aa5a1b6d2.png

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While messing about with a test document I found that editing the hyperlink resulted in two hyperlinks being created. If I deleted one of them then the link wouldn't exist and that part of the URL wouldn't work. If I just left both in the Hyperlinks studio then the two lines acted as two links to the same web page. Using the Hyperlinks Studio I could see and go to the links in the Publisher Document quite easily.

In your example above with the draggable delimiters what would happen to the link for the second line? "index.aspx?NID=158"? I wound up with two links one for each line after I had edited the original link. To get rid of the second link I had to actually delete it in the Hyperlink Studio.

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Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Hi Old Bruce,

as far as I understand the PDF specification, hyperlinks are added to a PDF file by having so-called link annotations placed on a page. A link annotation is represented by either a rectangle or by a set of quadrilaterals whose position on the page is specified according to a page-related coordinate system. From a technical point of view, a hyperlink in a PDF file is independent from the text string it was added to in the DTP application that was used to create this file. You can think of a hyperlink in a PDF document as assigned to a rectangle drawn on top of a portion of text (or on top of an image). 

Let me give you an example. This is how it looks like when you add a hyperlink to a text in Publisher:

Publisher-UI.png.301d418894f6a68f4c64e2d9c2363fac.png

But when you export the file to PDF and open it in a PDF editor that allows you to change the links contained in the document, you will see that the hyperlink is now represented by a rectangle covering not only the blue underlined string, but also the string “Please visit: ”. And you can click not only the blue underlined string to visit the linked page, but you can also click the words “Please visit: ”. Give it a try.

Link.png.59990fc3e06161f0929f4108091ee3c5.png

Test.pdf

Test.afpub

So it is clear that we have to distinguish between the way how links are represented in Publisher’s user interface and the way how these links are technically rendered to PDFs. Therefore, my suggestions in the original post are to be understood as user-directed auxiliary visualisations. I am not interested in any visualisation of how Publisher actually renders links to PDFs. I fear it would only confuse the users of Publisher, when the application would draw a rectangle like in my second illustration. To sum up, I would like to suggest that

  • when I add a hyperlink to a string, I should have the option to see which part of the string was selected when I created the link (we need a menu option “Show Hyperlinks” besides “Show Anchors”),
  • I should be able to toggle the visibility of the hyperlink highlights in a similar way as I can do with anchors, fields or special characters such as line breaks (via the said menu option),
  • the link highlight should be independent of any character style I may or may not assign to a link (it is not the purpose of character styles to provide this kind of information, and font or style changes should not be relevant to links),
  • ideally, I should be able to change the length of the string a link is assigned to by editing the highlighted area..

I hope these suggestions and considerations are now clear enough to understand. :)

Alex

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On 5/25/2019 at 8:05 AM, A_B_C said:

We must have the option to show hyperlinks as well.

You can view and edit existing hyperlinks in a document in the Hyperlink Studio (View > Studio > Hyperlinks). 

Are you looking more for the ability to see when a certain part of text is hyperlinked within the text itself? Assuming you can't see them by the default hyperlink style that gets applied?

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Hi Jon,

I am sorry that my rather prolix post was still not clear enough. So, in short, I would like to have a menu option that would allow me to see when a certain part of text is hyperlinked within the text itself, regardless of text styles applied. Yes. Everyone does it. Publisher should do as well. :)

My mockup was perhaps a little misleading. Just draw, for instance, a rectangle around the respective part of text (see below). And as I said in my initial post, it would also be useful to have an option to adjust the length of the hyperlink in the underlying text after having created the hyperlink, and that means, not by re-typing parts of not already hyperlinked text within the boundaries of the existing hyperlink and deleting the duplicate outside afterwards. Can you understand what I mean? It would be useful if we had some handles that we could grab and drag in order to expand or shrink the hyperlinked portion of the text (in other words, to extend or reduce the length of the string that acts as a link). If this suggestion is still unclear, I will try to explain it differently later. :)

Could you please also have a look at my other recent threads concerning hyperlinks? Last week, I created a PDF with an interactive map for a non-profit, and I came across a few issues that might get lost otherwise. There have been also interesting discussions with other forum members in these threads.

Thank you very much,

Alex :)

 

7944C1D0-205D-4897-AD8B-2C9AE275815C.jpeg.8d084815683c2207087370891ec501e2.jpeg

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Not sure of understanding you:  Do you want to see on page layout what part of text has an URL assigned?

If yes, the easiest would be to assign a text style when assigning the URL. You may change style definition any time (for instance to make it more/less obviously visible).

I notice if I change text after assigning an URL then the formerly 1 URL got split/duplicated into several links, related to my text edits. In the screenshot it concerns the lower left text frame: I had added "and" after assigning the URL to "finity Pub" –> in the Hypertext Panel it results now as three times "finity Pub" but each with identical URL.

To detect the exact part of text which has an URL assigned I used the button in the lower left: "Go to source". That way the affected characters become selected. Unfortunately text changes would not appear in the Hypertext Panel, that, indeed, might make it confusing once you alter text after assigning the URL.

315219206_hyperlinkseditlook.thumb.jpg.59806c40e07abfcec65aca0cc0e69aac.jpg

 

On 5/25/2019 at 11:58 PM, A_B_C said:

But when you export the file to PDF and open it in a PDF editor that allows you to change the links contained in the document, you will see that the hyperlink is now represented by a rectangle covering not only the blue underlined string, but also the string “Please visit: ”. And you can click not only the blue underlined string to visit the linked page, but you can also click the words “Please visit: ”. Give it a try. 

I assume it is a matter how PDF is handling objects at all. For links it obviously need rectangles around all characters, not just text their base lines. That means if a link is assigned to text with a line break (= over 2 lines) then the rectangle must become larger than expected.

So, to avoid such a rectangle containing text which should not be linked, you could separate the links when a line break occurs. Compare the left frame in the screenshot above + this from Acrobat:

719218555_hyperlinkseditlookPDF.thumb.jpg.53ab4e452341348fda4e3a05206b5f15.jpg

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 only

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Okay, it seems terribly difficult to understand my simple request. :(

Basically, it is just an incredibly humble one: I want to have a visual indication on the canvas that informs me which parts of my texts are hyperlinks. -_-

Show-Hyperlinks.thumb.png.2f15831233546cb0ade787ad2a7efd59.png

 

This cannot be done by text styles, guys! Why is that so hard to understand? For it is possible to assign a functional hyperlink to a shape, a text box, etc. etc., none of which can be marked or highlighted by text styles.

For instance, I created this map last week. The screenshot is from a PDF editor, and it exhibits all of the hyperlinks I added to the page in Publisher. As you can see, I added hyperlinks to text frames on top of my map that contain the county abbreviations. How can I possibly highlight these hyperlinks with text styles? Remember, the links are assigned to the frames, not to the text inside! And the frames will not be visible in the PDF output. Only the PDF editor will show them, when I set it to show hyperlinks. Why would it be impossible for Publisher to show links in that fashion? Or even hard to implement? 

Oregon.png.660d6e0133f4ec74e7ec4658af77e889.png

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+1 – I agree! I think this is a much needed function! I have also noticed how difficult it is to easily find the various links that have been created in a document.

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My other remarks in this post were discussing an objection brought up against my initial request by Old Bruce. I said that I would not be primarily interested in having an accurate representation of the active area of a link in the resulting PDF (for other export formats might handle that differently anyway), but it would suffice if I had the option to see at least the strings I had assigned hyperlinks too.

PDF will always render hyperlinks as rectangular “buttons” on top of text, images, whatever you like, such that these “buttons” enclose everything you had selected before assigning your hyperlink. There is no way to avoid that. If I were, for instance, to add my hyperlinks directly to the county shapes on my map, the “buttons” in the resulting PDF would overlap in a way that the map would become completely unusable.

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My follow-up suggestion contained in the initial post as well as here concerns the options of editing hyperlinks within a text frame after they have been created.

  • Have a look how cumbersome that procedure turns out in my old version of ID. I just want to replace “super” by “hyper,” but at the same time, keep it a link. I have to add “hyper” inside the string, then delete the superfluous letters.
  • It is not as cumbersome in Publisher, thankfully, but nonetheless, I think it would be nice, if we could simply drag the borders of a rectangle that would be drawn around a link in order to enlarge the hyperlink string. At the moment, this requires re-typing and deleting letters too. Have a look at my second video.

I hope this feature suggestion is understandable now as well. :)

 

First video. ID 5.5 Implementation

 

Second video. Publisher Implementation

 

 

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39 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

Okay, it seems terribly difficult to understand my simple request. :(

Compare: I ask you:

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

Do you want to see on page layout what part of text has an URL assigned?

... and you answer:

40 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

I want to have a visual indication on the canvas that informs me which parts of my texts are hyperlinks. -_-

So far I understand we both have said the same with different words. Do you agree?

Let's continue:

43 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

This cannot be done by text styles, guys! Why is that so hard to understand? 

Because you don't explain why it "cannot be done". – In my screenshots above I do see exactly which parts of text are hyperlinks, I simply recognize it by the text style. How would you interpret the underlined text in the screenshots?

Also you see in the 2nd screenshot how Acrobat is interpreting the input from AfPub. And that that may vary. And that you might respect it when working in AfPub.

1 hour ago, A_B_C said:

For instance, I created this map last week. The screenshot is from a PDF editor, and it exhibits all of the hyperlinks I added to the page in Publisher. As you can see, I added hyperlinks to text frames on top of my map that contain the county abbreviations. How can I possibly highlight these hyperlinks with text styles? Remember, the links are assigned to the frames, not to the text inside! And the frames will not be visible in the PDF output. Only the PDF editor will show them, when I set it to show hyperlinks. Why would it be impossible for Publisher to show links in that fashion?

In that case, since you sound to prefer the look which you get shown in Acrobat Editor (a blue dashed rectangle around black text), I wonder, why you don't define in Publisher a hyperlink text style which comes as close as possible to your preferred look? – If you want the rectangles visible than just do it!

I guess one reason for hard understanding is the fact, that you talk about three kinds of actions without telling us who is who: You / creators software / readers software.
For instance:

1 hour ago, A_B_C said:

How can I possibly highlight these hyperlinks with text styles?

• I would say this got answered already before you had asked there :: To highlight a hyperlink use a text style which highlights text.
• But you might mean another kind of highlight, for instance which occurs, when the reader is hovering in your pdf over a link?
• Or you might mean a highlight which gets created by AfPub and its user interface (so: not by you).

You did not tell. That makes it difficult.

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I did tell. Please read my words in context. I said:

  • I want to have a visual indication on the canvas that informs me which parts of my texts are hyperlinks.

If you had taken the time to compare the illustration that accompanied these words (attached again for easy reference below), you would have understood that I mean by “visual indication” the same thing as the blue anchor icon that indicates the position of an anchor in the text (you probably missed to read the words in the illustration). This anchor icon itself does never get exported, but the underlying anchor can be used as a link target within the document. In other words, the anchor icon is a non-printing object like a guide, a bleed frame, a text-flow indicator, a field indicator, or a special character. In exactly the same way, I want Publisher to show me the places where I assigned hyperlinks, regardless of any text style or whatever. I don’t want the respective indicators to be exported or printed, and I want them to be independent of any other design decisions I make. These indicators should serve the same informational purpose for me (as a designer) as the anchor icons and the other non-printing elements do.

Next I said,

  • the same cannot achieved by text styles.

And this is simply because, and I quote myself, “it is possible to assign a functional hyperlink to a shape, a text box, etc. etc., none of which can be marked or highlighted by text styles”. Please try to get the argument. When I assign a hyperlink to a shape or to a text box, not to a string of text, I will assign a hyperlink to an object that cannot be formatted by a text style. Hence, if a text style is the only way to highlight hyperlinks (in other words, to inform me, as a designer, working in Publisher, of the presence of a hyperlink at this place), I will have no visual indication on the canvas, within Publisher, that I assigned a hyperlink to the respective object. “Visual indication” is to be understood the sense above.

And finally, I made a suggestion regarding

  • more comfortable options of editing hyperlinks within a portion of text after these links have been created.

So please don’t quote my words without respecting the context. Sorry for sounding frustrated, but this is such an obvious request that I have a hard time to understand how my words can be misunderstood. :(

 

Again.thumb.png.de1c5e713dd3b43f0a4c07596dc75552.png

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I admit that I might have not been overly terminology-consistent in some places. Let me apologise for that. :(

(But I hope my request is clear enough now, I hope it will be acknowledged by the developers, and we can put this thread to rest. :ph34r:)

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Been very clear all along (to me) and totally agree that this would be a wonderful enhancement and time saver. We anticipate using APub for a lot of PDF-with-hyperlinks output, so would be very handy to be able to see where the various graphic and text links are when working within the document, especially when modifying/updating previous docs. 

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Okay, I guess I got it now. I had been confused for three reasons:

A. You posted the topic in Bugs, so I assumed you miss features to design hyperlinked items at all. Instead, its rather a feature request for more intuitive or yet non-existing UI.
B. The topic is mainly about missing visualization, so it is hardly possible to document such invisibles with screenshots.

C. The visual design of a hyperlink may occur in two ways:

  1. the visual appearance of the linking item = its style (color, font, stroke etc.)
  2. the visual appearance of the hyperlink itself = inside 1. &  invisible on canvas

 

Yes, I do agree, the UI is hardly to understand and to handle because it ...

  • does not give expected information, or
  • gives wrong information, or
  • demands extra user-interaction to get information

For instance:

  1. The Hyperlink panel seems to have always (any former or) the first entry selected by default – regardless of a selected object on canvas. (= implies wrong information)
     
  2. A selection on canvas has no feedback in the hyperlink panel: Even if an object gets selected on canvas then in hyperlink panel the selected entry does not change from either its default or recently selected entry according to the object selection. There is no "Find in hyperlink panel" contextual menu (compare: "Find in Layers panel"). So it seems to be impossible to detect a hyperlink panel entry according to a selection on canvas. (= wrong or no information)
     
  3. It needs several step user interaction to detect a hyperlink panel entry according to a specific object on canvas:
    1. select an entry in hyperlink panel –> 2. click button "Go to source". (= try & error to find the wanted entry for step 1)
     
  4. A hyperlink entry on text is auto-named by its initial text selection. Its name does not change with later text change on canvas. (= wrong information)
     
  5. In hyperlink panel long entry names get auto-cropped. And they do not show via mouse-over at least. So it can get impossible to identify such a list entry by its name (= no information)
     
  6. A hyperlink assigned to an object (no text selection) gets a default auto-name + number. Those object hyperlink entry must not custom named in the window of creation. (= no information, if not custom named afterwards in separate window)
     
  7. Though in hyperlink panel you may select more than 1 entry then still the command "Go to source" does not select more than 1 object on canvas. (= no or wrong information)
     
  8. A hyperlink with empty URL is allowed; on canvas is no feedback for such empty links. (= error in PDF)

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Glad we arrived at a mutual understanding, and thank you for the list! All the items on your list are a hindrance to a streamlined workflow. :)

(Number 4 has been declared as being by design. In a way, I understand that. There might be an UI issue with long strings. On the other hand, this issue will show up already when the initial entry is set. Hmm. I don’t know what to say. Maybe you can add your voice to the thread I linked to.)

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