Anchor and figure links

[currently_at_work]

Hello everyone,

I have a problem with linking to an anchor or a figure. When linking to them the link will always jump to the top of the page the anchor or figure is on. It doesnt matter where on the page the anchor/figure is (so its not a scrolling issue).

These were my steps:

For Anchors:
I chose the option to put an anchor in front of the text line I want to jump to and I put in a anchor ID.
To link to this anchor I used the option topiclink. As linktext I used the topicname (variable), I selected the topic from the ist and I selected the Anchor ID from the drop-down-list.

For figures:
When putting in the figure I choose the option to automatically add it to the table of figures and I gave it an ID I choose.
To link to this figure I used figure link. I choose the topic out of the list and then the figure out of the drop-down list.

Both links are shown with a little page icon at the end and as I said they link to the top of the page, not to the anchor/figure.

Where did I go wrong? My goal is to click on the link in the PDF and have it jump to the anchor/figure, so that its on top of the screen.

Thanks!

[Tim Green]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Are your anchors perhaps inside expanding text toggles? That won't work in the plain standard skins included with Help+Manual. Automatically opening toggles for anchors is only supported in the skins in the Premium Pack add-on.

Also, what output format are you using, and what skin or template are you applying?

[currently_at_work]

Hey:)
Thanks!


My Anchors are just in the normal text in the topics (not in the headings) in the beginning of a sentence.

Output format: PDF

My template is a "H&M Print Manual Template"


And like I said I have the same issue with figure links, they also jump to the start of the page not the figure.

I hope my answers are sufficient, because Im not 100% sure I got everything you meant

[Tim Green]

The issue is that it's a PDF, which doesn't really support anchors in the same sense as they exist in PDF. It has "named destinations", and while Help+Manual does export anchors as named destinations, they are not very reliable. I'm checking with our developers on the current status of this, but I can confirm that at the moment normal topic links to anchors don't work in PDF.

This being said, the real question is why you are trying to use PDF as an interactive documentation format. It is a very poor choice for interactive documentation. A PDF is simply raw printer data saved in a file and viewed on the screen with a special printer driver that "prints" to the screen instead of to a printer. Adobe has added a lot of bells and whistles to PDF over the years, but all that is really just lipstick on a tailor's dummy.

With PDF, you have to distribute the entire PDF to all your users, or every user has to download the entire PDF to view a single page. You also need to redistribute the entire documentation every time you change something. If you use WebHelp you get a genuinely interactive format that you don't have to distribute at all. You just put it on your server, can update it at a moment's notice and users can access it directly and only need to load the page they're actually viewing.

As a documentation format, PDF is outstanding for two things only: For those who want to read the entire documentation from start to finish, like a book. And for those who want a physical printout. Since a PDF is printer data to start with, it generates the best possible printouts. That is where WebHelp falls down, because it's awful for printing.

[Tim Green]

This was an error in 10.2, caused by a change to something else. It is corrected in this interim build, which you can download if you need it urgently:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/download/ ... -v1030.exe