HTML, internal links and PDF-XChange 2012 printer driver

[Victor Warner]

Is it possible to generate a pdf using the PDF-XChange 2012 printer driver where any internal links are replicated in the resulting pdf (such as in the attached file)?

An example html file is attached.

(Apologies if this wrong forum.)

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Victor,

Yes it is possible if you installed the PDF XChange Standard printing drivers. They come with an Internet Explorer plug-in that will allow you to convert web pages and preserve links in the resulting PDF. You can also use the Office2PDF (a helper app provided with the Standard package) to convert HTML documents in the background to PDFs.

Regards,
Stefan

[Victor Warner]

Thank you for the response.

What is the difference between the PDF-XChange 2012 driver to PDF-XChange Standard driver?

I have tried the former but even enabling the links tab does not generate internal links in the file I provided in my original post.

Any further help would be gratefully received.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Victor,

The printing driver in the Pro bundle package is the same as in the Standard package. Did you use the IE add in or File->Print?

The links were properly generated for me - please check the attached sample.

Regards,
Stefan

[Victor Warner]

The attached file does not show internal links. The links point to external file. See attached screen shots.

I tried File/Printed and Office2PDF5 (the latter just kept crashing).

I know this is possible, using an open source utility (wkhtmltopdf), just not with your software it seems.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Victor,

You mean relative links?
I am afraid that we rely on IE to render the page and prepare it for us before we generate the PDF, and it seems like it makes all relative links full (Attached is an image from IE10 on my machine with me hovering one of your links) so the result in the PDF is also a full link - which in my sample conversion is linking to my desktop as this is where I launched your sample file from.

Regards,
Stefan

[Victor Warner]

Are you saying that an internal link in an html such as the original file I posted when printed/converted to pdf using Tracker Software will not be retained as an internal link?

As in my previous post, I know this is technically possible. Attached is a pdf I generated from the original html file using wkhtmltopdf program (https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/).

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Victor,

We do not do any link conversion, and it's up to IE to process thelinks before sending us the HTML for conversion into PDF. So if IE makes those links full ones - then that's what will be present in our PDF file as well.

I do not say it's technically impossible, I just say that the way it is processed by IE makes it impossible for us to generate such relative links.

Regards,
Stefan

[Victor Warner]

OK. Tracker Software does not provide for internal linking. This is a pity.

Without this, sending a document to a third party with links makes the result pdf pretty useless (as far as including links). As the recipient will need the original html file, and a file structure and use name corresponding to the sender. Not really likely.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi Victor,

we can of course add this functionality in a later build, as Stefan said it's impossible with the current implementation. I have raised a formal Feature Request to have this added to the a future build of the IE Add-In. (RT#2027: Feature request: HTML, internal links and PDF-XChange 2012 printer driver)

Unforeseen problems not withstanding, I don't think it will be a problem to do.

hth

[Victor Warner]

Paul,

It would be great additional to functionality if this would be added.

Thank you for considering adding it.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Thanks for the comment Victor!

And I just spoke with our add-in developers and while they confirmed that we do not currently support internal links in HTML files this can be added in a future add-in version, and as we already have the ticket Paul created it's going to be followed up.

Regards,
Stefan

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

The ticket has been updated reflecting that this has been done for the next build. Look for this in build 272 early next week.

hth