[pdftex] pdf inclusion & hyperlinks

[Andreas Matthias]

Stefan Moebius wrote:

> I'm using pdflatex with the pdfpages package to combine some articles
> into a journal. The articles contains some hyperlinks to the web as
> well as some internal refs (bib, equations, ...). The problem now is
> that the links no longer work in the completed journal (though they are
> still part of the pdf).
> 
> I contacted Andreas Matthias and he told me to ask here. He also said
> that  he had heard from several people having the same problem.

Since there is no response to this mail yet, I would like to try to
clarify things a bit. I did not have a look at the WEB sources, so
I hope I am not talking complete nonsense.

When including a page of a PDF document with \pdfximage, pdftex
copies the /Contents of that page, but it does not copy the /Annots.
Of course there are a lot of annotations for which it does not make
much sense to copy them. But there are others for which it would be
really useful. Most notably annotations which are very frequently
used by pdftex users. I am thinking about /Link annotations with 
/URI actions, like hyperlinks to web and email addresses.
(Concerning pdfpages.sty I get a lot of mails from people asking about
missing web and email hyperlinks.)

How much effort would it make to let pdftex detect and copy /Link
annotations with /URI actions? If someone would be willing to
write a patch, would it be reasonable to handle just this case
or should other annotations (Widget, FreeText, ...) be considered
as well?

Does someone like to write a patch? ;-)

Ciao
Andreas