Relative Links from Snippets for same Anchor Names in Multip

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Benjamin Bruecker
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Relative Links from Snippets for same Anchor Names in Multip

Unread post by Benjamin Bruecker »

Hi all,

from snippets I would like links to point to an anchor name which exist in all topics in which the snippets are included. Because it is mandatory to set a target topic in topics links, I have tried to use internet links. Internet links accepts something like #target for the anchors.

This works pretty fine with Web output, but unfortunately not for the PDF output. The Links appear in PDF, but they do not work. I assume the PDF output can not deal with the same anchor name within one document. It works, if the anchor name appears only once in the document, but this contradicts the Idea to use a snippet multiple times.

I hope I described it quite well. If not, please ask.

We use snippets in quite massive way. So it would help us a lot, if there is way how to deal with that. Is this problem solved in Version 7 or are there other work-a-rounds for that?

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Benjamin
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Tim Green
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Re: Relative Links from Snippets for same Anchor Names in Mu

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Benjamin,

Sorry, but there is no real solution for this. A target topic must be included in a topic link unless you are targeting the current topic. I know you are linking within the current topic, but if you are doing this in PDF you need to have a topic ID as a reference if the anchor is used more than once. There is no way around that because a PDF is really just a single topic, no matter how long it is. All links in a PDF are effectively anchors ("bookmarks") and if the same anchor occurs multiple times it can only be identified by being combined with a topic ID to make a longer, unique anchor. :?
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Benjamin Bruecker
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Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2015 5:12 pm

Re: Relative Links from Snippets for same Anchor Names in Mu

Unread post by Benjamin Bruecker »

Hi Tim,

Thank you for the answer. So I do not need to search for a solution. I'm afraid, this feature is very important for us, and we need to check other HAT for that.

Regards,
Benjamin
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Tim Green
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Re: Relative Links from Snippets for same Anchor Names in Mu

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Benjamin,

Don't despair -- I was only referring to the current situation, and things can change quite quickly in Help+Manual. Theoretically this should be solvable, since a link to an anchor only can only refer to the current topic, so HM should be able to fix this for PDF on publishing. I've asked our developers to look into the possibility. 8)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Alexander Halser
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Re: Relative Links from Snippets for same Anchor Names in Mu

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

UPDATE: I just saw that you posted this in the version 6 forum... Yes, this works in version 7 and did not work in version 6.

Hm... did I get this right: you have a snippet and the snippet points to an anchor, let's call it "Anchor1". This anchor, however, is not defined inside the snippet, but in another topic. In particular: this Anchor1 is in every topic that includes the snippet. So the link inside the snippet points to Anchor1 in the respective parent topic, where the snippet has been inserted.

Is that correct? See this screenshot for an illustration:
clip1.gif
This can easily be done: insert a topic link in the snippet, and make sure that the link address points to "itself", that is the snippet. You must type the anchor name by hand. If the anchor is in the parent topic, you cannot select it from the list. But you can freely type the anchor name. See CLIP2 for illustration:
clip2.gif
When a topic link points to an anchor within the same topic, Help+Manual does not explicitely store the topic ID. It leaves the topic ID blank for editing and just replaces the blank ID at the moment the topic is exported. This works perfectly for me in PDF, too.
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Alexander Halser
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