Re: Optimize files in FM6...and feature request

[Thomas Neuburger <thomasn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Great information, Lee. Thanks for adding this and for correcting my 
earlier guesswork.

How about a feature request for the Acrobat side of things? Regarding Named 
Destinations, it would be great to be able to use them as command line 
options, the way they're used as HTML options.

On the HTML side, it's a terrific feature. You can open a PDF file from a 
web page with the syntax:

   http://stuff/myfile.pdf#dest

But you can't do that from the acroread, etc., command line.

Why does it matter (he asks rhetorically)? Because one important way to use 
a PDF help system is to allow the Help button in a group of tools to open 
the appropriate book -- say, Tools.pdf -- and then to turn to the page for 
that tool.

There are tons of good ways to use that feature, once it's available. The 
need is the same as the need in HTML. And the lack of command line 
capability is a design flaw that could easily be corrected, I think.

So the request -- maybe someone inside Adobe, who cares much about the 
Frame-PDF-helpsystem connection, could bend the ear of the Acrobat 
developers with this one? Just a thought...

Best,

Tom Neuburger
www.twelfthnight.com



Lee Richardson wrote:

>FM 5.5.x provided a way to link between files and books by creating "named 
>destinations" for all paragraphs that were targets of a link. This was 
>essentially a process of assigning a unique serial number to each 
>paragraph in a document to identify it for later. Exporting all these 
>named destinations to PDF made for large files.
>
>FM 5.5.6 contained a ps header hack that removed a lot of this additional 
>overhead. FM6 added functionality to flag each paragraph (or element) that 
>is the target of a link. When saving to PDF, only those paragraphs known 
>to be a link target (destination) have IDs (names) exported.
>
>The FM6 functionality only works if you've started editing a document with 
>FM6, because the flagging step happens when you actually create the link 
>(cross-reference, index, whatever). Any links you created with, say, 
>5.5.6, don't get the appropriate flag and therefore don't have names 
>exported. Some links may therefore not work in the resulting PDF.
>
>To solve this, the Optimize PDF Size function opens all docs in a given 
>collection and reflags all the paragraphs by following all the links. This 
>step is required for 5.5.6 docs and earlier that contain links if you want 
>to guarantee that all links work in PDF versions of the docs.
>
>Additionally, there may be cases where you've linked between docs in 
>multiple books, then changed those documents, such that a link may no 
>longer be valid. Rather than go through and reoptimize everything, you 
>could choose to "create named destinations for all paragraphs" in the 
>target doc to make sure that all links to paragraphs in a given PDF have 
>names. The PDF will be larger, but spurious broken links should go away. 
>If all links are contained within a given book, this shouldn't be 
>necessary (leave it off).
>
>Note that FM6 will only set the flag on a paragraph showing that it has 
>one or more links to it. The flag is never cleared during editing. A 
>heavily-edited document will therefore slowly accumulate flagged 
>paragraphs, so that PDF files generated from the doc may increase in size 
>as more and more named destinations are included. You can reset everything 
>by running Optimize PDF Size on these docs. With rare exceptions, I don't 
>think this will be an issue for anyone.
>
>The whole problem of maintaining inter-book and intra-book links is not 
>that different from maintaining hypertext links within a web site and 
>between multiple sites.
>
>...Lee
>
>At 5:44 PM +0200 5/8/01, Thomas Michanek wrote:
> >I'm getting more and more confused about the new FM 6
> >option of "optimizing" FM files coming from version 5.5.
> >
> >Is it correct that the function Format > Document >
> >Optimize PDF Size > Optimize File will change existing FM
> >documents so that they can take advantage of the new option
> >"Create Named Destinations for all paragraphs" (in
> >Format > Document > PDF Setup > Links) ?
> >So files coming from 5.5 *must* be "optimized" for this
> >option to be used, regardless if it will be on or off?
> >
> >If you select to "optimize" an FM 5.5 book file without first
> >opening it (and converting it) in FM 6, the "optimization"
> >seems to take place in the background, opening/changing/saving
> >the files on disk and apparently converting them to FM6 format.
> >But what happens if you first open the FM 5.5. book file and
> >all its files in FM 6, and then "optimize" by selecting the
> >same book file? My impression is that the optimization takes
> >place on the files on disk, rather than the opened files!
> >If I then save the files from FM 6, do I overwrite the
> >optimized files? There's no way to tell, and the interface
> >and its documentation is... er... in need of improvements...
>
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