Re: [xsl] RE: XSL-FL Basic-link results in wrong Adobe Acrobat link action specified

Subject: Re: [xsl] RE: XSL-FL Basic-link results in wrong Adobe Acrobat link action specified
From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:54:50 -0400
At 2011-09-27 13:24 +0000, Sharon Harris wrote:
I am trying to dynamically create active hyperlinks in PDF output using XSL-FO. The code I am using traverses the Release_Notes_Documentation node, which then calls the hyperlink template that specifies instructions for finding a string beginning w/ http:// and turning that string into a basic link. Everything looks great in the PDF output as the links display as active.

Unfortunately, only the 1st occurrence of an active link works correctly. Launches the browser to display the Web page associated w/ the url. All of the other active links (contain different but valid urls) do not launch a browser as the action specified when viewing the link properties in Adobe Acrobat for the other links is to "go to a page in another document" and "file" prefixes the url. On the 1 active link that does work correctly, the action specified in Adobe Acrobat is "open a web link".

How do I ensure that all of the active links uses the "open a web link" action?

I suggest looking at the intermediate result of XSLT transformation before looking at your code.


Carefully inspect every <fo:basic-link> that you create and determine if there is a difference between the first one and the remainder.

If not, it could be a problem with your XSL-FO engine.

If so, then it is a problem with assumptions in your XSLT.

In the classroom I remind students of the debugging value of the intermediate XSL-FO output: it is the first place I look when I have inconsistent output. Staring at my code doesn't help because I should have done it right the first time around. Inspecting the XSL-FO generated usually at least reveals my mistakes, if not how they were made.

And to help with the debug, I will often inject diagnostic information in comments in my XSL-FO. This is new to students who have already used XSL-FO. Since an XSL-FO engine ignores the comments, I can find the XSL-FO that is rendered near where I have problems and inspect the comments to correlate behaviours in my stylesheets.

I hope this helps.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken


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