[pdftex] pdf inclusion & hyperlinks

[The Thanh Han]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 11:07:28PM +0200, Andreas Matthias wrote:
> 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? ;-)

it wouldn't be a trivial patch at all. Not a weekend project.

Thanh