linking between PDF documents

["Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>]

I've been working on extending olinking to work between PDF documents. It
appears that different processors handle them a bit differently. In
addition, different browsers behave differently when accessing such links
over HTTP or local filesystems.

My goal is to create links that:

1.  use relative locations, so groups of PDF documents are portable.

2.  work over HTTP and in local filesystem access.

3.  link to a specific location in the target document.

I've created a test file that exercises several different syntaxes for the
XSL-FO external-destination property, and generated output from Antenna
House, FOP, and XEP.  If you want to try them out, go to:

http://www.sagehill.net/xml/olinktest/

See the olinktest.README file for details on how to use the files.  I've
also provided a zip archive if you want to download them and test them on
your local filesystem.

I've tested these files with Adobe Reader 6.0 and Internet Explorer 6 on
Windows XP. Only for XEP is there a single syntax (number 8 in the table)
that satisfies all three requirements. Both antennahouse and fop can link to
the PDF file, but they don't seem to contain the proper IDs for the fragment
identifiers to work (I can't find the string 'chap2' in either mybook.pdf
file).  In some cases the links with fragment identifiers will open the
document (but not to the right chapter), and in other cases they generate a
"File not found" error.

I would be interested in hearing your results when testing with other
browsers or PDF readers in the hopes of getting this to work in DocBook XSL.

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net