PDF LINKS PLUGIN (beta)

[fabsn]

i got a lot of internal links in a pdf file i want to convert with pdf2swf. is there any possibility to get this to work with megazine? maybe with this plugin?

thanks

[Hans Nücke]

The pdflinks plugin now is a standard plugin and part of the MegaZine3 download.
Internal and external links (usually) work very well.
You could use the newer mor complex and powerful command files provided with the tutorial; although still a draft version:
Tutorial (draft)

There you will find a step-by-step guidline about how to convert your PDF fast and easily. As quickstart and more detailed version also.
The link for the command files is provided in the tutorial. Just follow the Quickstart step by step (1 page). some steps are even available as video.

Good luck and success!

[gtech]

If you have a PDF file with links (external URL addresses) those links will be made available in the final book.
Clicking at the spot will take you to the external site.

See this test magazine as an example:
http://vservu.de/mz3demo/index-BRM.html#/2

I don't know if the clickable regions should get me somewhere, but they sure don't work for me... ?

Gilles

[fabsn]

The pdflinks plugin now is a standard plugin and part of the MegaZine3 download.
Internal and external links (usually) work very well.
You could use the newer mor complex and powerful command files provided with the tutorial; although still a draft version:
Tutorial (draft)

There you will find a step-by-step guidline about how to convert your PDF fast and easily. As quickstart and more detailed version also.
The link for the command files is provided in the tutorial. Just follow the Quickstart step by step (1 page). some steps are even available as video.

Good luck and success!

hi and thanks for your reply.

i downloaded the demo files and checked the tutorials from the book but don't get internal links to work. they are in the swf, i can click on them, but nothing happens. how does the tutorial book handle this? are the single pages of the pdf single swf files? are they somehow connected or how does the book know which page to jump?

i normaly convert my pdfs manually with pdf2swf with the following command: pdf2swf.exe file.pdf -o file_%.swf -O 1

i then implement the files with <chapter pages="src/file_[1-60].swf|?s" />

is there something wrong?

[Hans Nücke]

Did you try to download the command files or the demo files explained, referenced and discussed in the tutorial?
Latest Tutorial (still a draft)
command files (English)
command files (German)

Those take care about everything.
Basic requirements e.g. are that the pdflinks plugin is loaded (i.e. added to the list of plugons in the <book> tag under the parameter plugins)
and the pdf2swf tool is called correctly to pass the link information to the MZ3 book.
The command files use pdf2swf calling it similar (!) to this:

Code: (xml)

  %PDF2SWF%" -q -t -T 9 -s internallinkfunction=megazine.PDFlinkHandler --set storeallcharacters="1" -G -p %%i -f "%pdf_path%%pdf_name%"

Important is the internallinkfunction

There was a change in name of the pdflinks plugin. That was the reason for the problems gtech had with the sample book he checked out: that book's megazine.mz3 and the MegaZine3 software were no more compatible (outdated). At least for that example I fixed it.

Reccomendation: use the tools and the latest version of MegaZine3... and it should work ;-)

[fabsn]

hello hans, thanks for your fast help.

i got some problems with the 2.0.9 mz3 and some display problems (don't ask but today i tried it again with the latest nightly and with this internal links and appearance of the book are as it should be.

thanks,
fab

[maddin24]

I have a problem with internal pdf links, too.

In Adobe Acrobat I have created internal links form the table of content to the pages.
In Megazine I could click on the links, but they carry me only to "megazine/catalog/frame29_a2cdb333"
The code behind "frame" is variable for every link.

I use the newest versions of mz3, command files and pdf2swf.

What am I doing wrong?   

Thanks

[ccl]

Hello,

Same problem for me !
 With pdf2swf, links for table of content don't work !

It's possible to use/make  a link like anchor ? go to page ? in pdf files before convert it on swf ?

Thank you in advance !

Clément

[Hans Nücke]

In most cases this is not a problem of the pdf2swf conversion tool and neither MegaZine3; it is because of the "intelligence" of Acrobat Reader & Co:

Those utilities interpret "URL-like" text as link, i.e. even if not marked as link in the PDF paper, they guess that something starting with http:// must be a link. And then offer it as such. But the conversion tool does not do so.
An automatism that in most cases is helpful, but also can result in confusion...

Solution: let Adobe Acrobbat (or a similar PDF Tool) do the job and convert those text snippets, that look like URL links into real links.
There are commands for that.

After that run safe the PDF files, and do the conversion again. And you'll see that the links now also will work in MegaZine3.

[acme]

I'm building megazine from Adobe Flash Builder. I have the big problem whenever I try to build I get a "java.lang.NullPointerException" in Assets.as on every "[Embed]" statement that embeds a swf containing an internal link. I guess this is rather a Flash Builder problem, but has someone ever saw this error before?

[Florian Nücke]

Mmm, never had that. Does this also happen if you try to build using the ant script (i.e. via standalone Flex SDK, not Flash Builder)?

[acme]

Not yet, I'll give it a try. I also tried building against another versions of the Flex SDK (3.5 and the beta 4.5). Both don't work.
It's interesting that the internal links function properly when I don't compile the swfs for the book pages into a fat client. So I think it is a Flex compiler problem (what Flash Builder also states).
Can you try compiling some page-swfs with internal links into a fat client and see if this works for you? I'm not quite sure if my installation is broken somehow or if it's a bug in the flex compiler.

edit:
tried to compile it directly via ant. But it's the same error:

Code: [Select]

[mxmlc] D:\[...]\src\de\mightypirates\megazine\Assets.as(401): Spalte: 2: Fehler: Quelle de.mightypirates.megazine.Assets_PAGES_BOOK_PAGES_1 kann nicht erstellt werden.: java.lang.NullPointerException   [mxmlc]
[mxmlc]     [Embed(source="/../assets/megazine/pages/book-pages.1.swf")]
[mxmlc]  ^
[mxmlc]
Tried it on a different machine (both Win7, 64bit), didn't work either :-(

[Florian Nücke]

Mmm, allright, seems to be something the compiler doesn't like about certain kinds of SWFs, nothing I can do about that. You could work around that by packing your SWFs into a Zipfile and embedding that instead (and then either access the SWFs manually via the Zip library that's used anyway, or the ZipBundle (similar to how the assets.zip is embedded).

[acme]

I did another (more ugly) work around - I manually placed boxes above the links (and removed them before converting the pdf to swf). It works now at least. Pretty strange though that nobody else seems to have problems with it when searching google.