* Bug in hyperlinks in narrative reports

[gosforthian]

Assuming it isn't me being dumb, has anyone else found a way around this please?

I have added hyperlinks to some people's Note fields, to reference National Library of Scotland maps and various other external sites. They all work from within FH, but I have had to report a bug to Calico Pie (no #776657).

Most of the links do not come out correctly when exported to PDF or RTF files in Ancestors or Descendants narrative reports. Some short hyperlinks seem ok, but long ones only have the first part of the string active, so the full url address is not linked to. And all of those with Display text in the FH Web Link do not come out as hyperlinks at all.

If you want to try one, here is a typical url for a side-by-side map from the fabulous NLS site:
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by ... ht=BingHyb

Thanks

Ian

[tatewise]

Yes, I can repeat all those symptoms in any type of Report and not just Narrative Reports.
(However, I'm not sure URL will work in RTF files at all.)

It seems that the line break within the long URL prevents the full URL being enabled.
If the report text font is made small enough for the full URL to appear on one line then it works as expected.

Those with Display Text don't work at all.

[gosforthian]

Thanks Mike. I will try the font size trick!

[gosforthian]

For information, this is what the support team replied with.

"Family Historian does not currently support exporting web links as clickable links to either PDF or RTF. Instead, web links are exported as text. If the text is displayed as a link (i.e. the "Display Text" field is left blank when the web link is created so that the text looks recognisably a link), some PDF browsers will try to automatically detect it as a clickable link. They may or may not be able to detect links which extend over more than one line. Equally word-processors loading a RTF file will typically also try to automatically detect clickable links, and again, may do a better or worse job of that if the text extends over more than one line.

In the next minor update we will add support for exporting web links as clickable links when exporting to RTF. We have noted that you would like the same feature to be supported for PDF too. "

[gosforthian]

An update. Calico Pie have fixed the hyperlinks bug in .rtf narrative report files, so they are now clickable. They do not seem to have fixed it in PDFs yet. I have seen the .rtf fix which will be in FH 7.0.9.0. They didn't provide a release date.
Ian

[tatewise]

I suspect they cannot resolve the problem in PDF because they are created by the 3rd party NovaPDF Print utility.
What happens to the hyperlinks if you use a word-processor such as Word to export the RTF as a PDF?

[sbell95]

I am running version 7.0.19 and having a similar problem with URLs in source citations when exporting reports to either RTF or PDF format.

According to the version log, this should've been fixed in 7.0.9 for RTFs:

If you export a report in Rich Text Format (RTF) any clickable links (e.g. web links) within the report (which aren’t clickable in a report context ordinarily), are now exported as clickable links in RTF.

But the URLs in my source citations are not clickable hyperlinks once exported in RTF format from FH and opened in Word. They are defined in the source template editor as URL types, and in the report they seem to be all forced onto one line, so there should be no problem with the URL being valid... but is there an option somewhere I'm missing to create the hyperlinks, or is this not possible? Did they only 'fix' web links and not URLs in other contexts?

EDIT: The same issue persists when exporting reports to HTML format!

[tatewise]

IMO that is to be expected.
The Source Template metafield is defined as URL and in the Source Citation display those fields are clickable links.
However, the Footnote is plain text and any 'URL' therein are not clickable links in the Source Citation display so would not expect to be clickable links in Reports. The same goes for Short Footnotes and Bibliography plain text.

[sbell95]

...in the Source Citation display those fields are clickable links.

Do you mean this screen? If so, yes, the URL is clickable via the little arrow on that field. But in the formatted source citation on right, the URL is not displayed as a hyperlink.

However, the Footnote is plain text...

Surely not, as the italics in my website name print as such...? I guess I can't have it both ways, though - URLs and italics!

[tatewise]

I presume the italics are specified in the Footnote Format template and nothing to do with it being a URL.

[sbell95]

But that's exactly my point - I've specified that field to be italics and another one to be a URL. So why can the latter not be formatted as such (a hyperlink) in the produced footnote?

[tatewise]

It is the metafield that is defined as URL.
It is only its text representation that gets embedded in the Footnote and happens to have italic style.
Other metafields are defined as Place and appear in the Footnote as plain text.
The field in the Source Citation links to the Place List but the same text in the Footnote does not.
The individual metafields each have their own dynamic characteristics depending on their type, but the Footnote is just non-dynamic plain text.

[sbell95]

Thanks for your explanation, as always, Mike.

I guess I will leave it for the time being. I have added a wishlist post regarding the export of reports, etc, to Markdown format, which may solve my problem. There are workarounds in the meantime.

[gosforthian]

I suspect they cannot resolve the problem in PDF because they are created by the 3rd party NovaPDF Print utility.
What happens to the hyperlinks if you use a word-processor such as Word to export the RTF as a PDF?

Mike, I must apologise. I didn't spot your question all that time ago. Using MS Word to convert an RTF to a PDF does correctly reproduce the hyperlink.

Regards

Ian

[Gary_G]

I'm quite interested to see how this plays out, because RTF is not the greatest vehicle for use with the more advanced elements, like hyperlinks and graphics. I think that's why many programs now export directly to MSWord format. That said; I wish they would consider exporting to a an open standard like ODF. ODF is accepted by almost all word processors, even MSWord itself. I'm looking forward to seeing if CP adds something better than RTF output in future releases.

[NickWalker]

I'm quite interested to see how this plays out, because RTF is not the greatest vehicle for use with the more advanced elements, like hyperlinks and graphics. I think that's why many programs now export directly to MSWord format. That said; I wish they would consider exporting to a an open standard like ODF. ODF is accepted by almost all word processors, even MSWord itself. I'm looking forward to seeing if CP adds something better than RTF output in future releases.

Docx (the standard Word document format) is an open standard too and it would be good if they supported that.

[Gary_G]

Nick;

I was under the impression that DOCX was still controlled by Microsoft. At least it was when I worked with its "apartment model" on a source-code auto-documentation program a few years back. That said; anything would be better than just RTF. Perhaps we could then export hyperlinked footnotes etc.

[NickWalker]

No this has been an open standard now for about 15 years - same applies to xlsx (spreadsheet/Excel) and pptx (Presentation/Powerpoint)

[Gary_G]

Nick;

So Microsoft has no control over the standard at all any more?
I used to work for a company that was a Microsoft-approved "development-house" and had access to all the tech docs.
At that time everyone claimed it was open-source, but Microsoft was still very much in control.

Anyways; that aspect is actually irrelevant. It's a decent standard and unlikely to go away.

I'd be able to manage with either format, but ODF often works better for hyperlinks for some reason. I use Scrivener for post-processing my genealogy documents. It accepts both DOCX and ODF and typically works well with both. RootsMagic currently puts out their reports in DOCX, but I actually had to convert them to ODF before footnotes would work properly in Scrivener. So; you can understand why I am a little hesitant about DOCX. CP will want to test things carefully before choosing one or the other.

[NickWalker]

I'm sure MS lobbies hard if changes are proposed to the standard but it's an open standard so anyone can use it and apparently it hasn't been changed for 6 years now. Most of the key software supports it and it must be the most common document format (for word-processing) in the world. It sounds like either Scrivener or Rootsmagic have a problem with the footnotes but that's no reason to see it as a problem with the standard itself. I'd rather that the most popular method was supported rather than a less used alternative. It's similar to how Microsoft used to push the XPS standard rather than PDF - ultimately futile and they seem to have accepted/embraced PDF now (you can even edit PDFs in Word nowadays).

[Gary_G]

Nick;

I can tell you that there are very few programs that support every aspect of the DOCX standard. Having extensive experience with it, I can attest to it being VERY complex and it would be unlikely that all aspects would be supported in all programs.

The de facto metric for judging full DOCX support has, unfortunately, become whether MSWord will fully process the file. Contrary to what you state, DOCX is still changing, as evidenced by constant updates to MSWord via its subscription service. So; every other program must play "Catch-up" and that is expensive for small companies to do on an ongoing basis. That is why some, like Scrivener which supports both formats, have chosen to put more effort into ODF support.

MSWord is a full-fledged word processor and other programs serve quite different purposes. While it's true to say some that some "have a problem with footnotes", they do require time to adjust their software to Microsofts latest tweaks. Believe me; FH7 would encounter the same difficulties.

While I've no particular love for RootsMagic, they have already gotten much better at putting out DOCX files that other non-MSWord programs can process. (If one converts DOCX to ODF and imports it to Scrivener, it fully imports bi-directional hyperlinked footnotes). Let's hope CP will at least give it a shot. Even if it's not the ODF files that I prefer, it's better than RTF.

[NickWalker]

Contrary to what you state, DOCX is still changing, as evidenced by constant updates to MSWord via its subscription service. So; every other program must play "Catch-up" and that is expensive for small companies to do on an ongoing basis. That is why some, like Scrivener which supports both formats, have chosen to put more effort into ODF support.

I am well aware that Word is constantly being updated but we're not talking about Word, we're talking about a file format. I assume the actual format of the file isn't changing. Apparently the standard was last modified in 2016 - Wikipedia quotes that as the most recent update and refers to this: https://www.ecma-international.org/publ ... /ecma-376/

[Gary_G]

Nick;
My attempts to use the standard, to figure out why some software is not working, indicates some changes. I can't say when and by whom they were made.

That said; further discussion likely won't change the solution that I think we both agree is needed; that of having some form of output file that better handles hyperlinks. In the end; CP will make that call.

[sbell95]

All,

This is why I created my export to Markdown wishlist item just recently (viewtopic.php?f=43&t=21793). Perhaps it could be expanded to include other “open source” formats like ODF and DOCX?

[Gary_G]

Sarah;

I've also used Markdown. It imports perfectly into Scrivener, but there are not that many other packages that handle it. What are you using to process Markdown?

While I like Markdown, because one can easily use either a text editor or a WYSIWYG markdown editor, I'm not sure how many people really understand how to use it to full advantage. If CP did include it, I'd be happy as a clam, but I'm not sure that they will.