Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

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Timmeh
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Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Timmeh »

Hi there,

I've been writing some documentation in Microsoft Word and using the automatic bookmark creation option in the PDF-XChange (5.0) Add-in based on heading styles and it's worked quite well so far.

However, I've noticed a slight feature "feature" when navigating via the bookmarks in any PDF viewer (this happens in Adobe Acrobat viewer, PDF-XChange Viewer and the Editor), in that the bookmark seems to point to a a position on the page that's slightly lower than the actual heading. This means that you only see the bottom half of the heading when navigating via the bookmarks. In the attachment, please see the file "problem header.png" for an illustration of how it appears.

If you use Word's Save-As command to save to PDF then the issue does not occur and clicking on a bookmark displays the heading correctly, as you can see in the file "okay header.png".

In both examples, I clicked on "section 4" bookmark upon opening the PDFs (these are also in the attachment as the original word document).

I've installed the latest build available from the site (5.0.272) and the problem still occurs.

I checked the bookmarks in the PDF Editor and it appears that the bookmark destinations for each version (Word and PDFX-Change) are slightly different from each other (please see attached "heading link" files).

Please could you kindly let me know what I could try to try and resolve this as this will be used for end-user documentation?

Thank you very much for your help!
Attachments
Bookmark Headers.zip
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Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

In my opinion it has something to do with the 'Spacing before' and 'Spacing after' used in the paragraph formatting of the Heading styles in Word. If you set them to '0' (zero), you will see that the bookmark position will be correct (via the PDF-XChange add-in).

A long time ago there was a similar problem in the PDF-XChange add-in with the positioning of hyperlinks on text with spacing before/after. At first sight that seems to be resolved.
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Paul - Tracker Supp
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

Hi guys,

thanks for the input Willy,

I took a look at the Word document to see if I could change that spacing in the paragraphs you mentioned Willy. I guess my skills in MS Word leave something to be desired... I cannot find where to set that. Any suggestions Willy?

Also - when looking at the Section Heading 4 I see it has 'hidden' sub headings. Are these intentional? See image below:

Image

I'm also wondering what version of Word you are using.
Best regards

Paul O'Rorke
Tracker Support North America
http://www.tracker-software.com
Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Hi Paul,

Myself, I have Word 2010, but there is no much difference towards Word 2013.

If you look at the ribbon, you see that the different icons are bundled in groups. In the Home-tab you have groups like Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles, and Editing. In the right bottom corner of each group there is a little arrow.
When you click on that you will reach additional options in form of a dialogbox or an extra panel (for styles).

When you click at the arrow in the Paragraph group you will get a dialogbox with two tabs:
- Indents and Spacing
- Line and Page Breaks
In the "Indents and Spacing" you will find what I was talking about "Spacing" - After / Before.

Changing these settings will only have effect in the paragraph where the cursor is, or in the paragraphs that are selected at that moment.

To have an effect on the several titles in the document, formatting by a certain 'style', like the Heading 1 ... 9 styles, you will have to 'modify' the style settings.
This goes by first activating the Styles panel (via the little arrow in the styles group), and hoovering the mouse above the style to change. You will see that a rectangle is shown with a 'triangle' at the end. Click on that triangle and in the roll-out menu choose "Modify". In the left bottom corner of the dialogbox that now is being shown, you will find a "Format" button.
This one gives you access to the different Font, Paragraph, ... and other settings that will be specific for the actual "style".

Hope this helps you a little further.

What do you exactly mean by 'hidden' subheadings ?
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Paul - Tracker Supp
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

Thanks for that Willy,

I did as you suggested in the Word document and it seemed to me to fix the location of the bookmark as displayed. Timmeh can you try the same and let us know how that goes?

hth
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Paul O'Rorke
Tracker Support North America
http://www.tracker-software.com
Timmeh
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Timmeh »

Hi Paul and Willy,

Thank you very much for your assistance with this, I appreciate your input!

Just to illustrate the problem for future reference, here's what I meant by half-hidden:
Image

As you can see the jump target is halfway through a header, rather than what it should be:
Image

I am using Word 2010 at the moment.

You're right about the paragraph spacing, it appears that if you have "before" spacing (any amount of "after" is fine) on a header then it will not generate the correct jump target. Therefore, you have to set it to zero to get it to work correctly.

I did some additional investigation on my side as well with this, to see if there was anything else affecting it.

Turns out that there is something that affects it: "HTML paragraph Auto Spacing". There's an option in Word in the "Compatibility" section named "Don't use HTML paragraph Auto Spacing" and if you check this, your document's layout shifts slightly, but now the jump targets are generated fine by PDF X-Change for any amount of "before" spacing.
Image

Apparently this has been around since Word 2000: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/207893 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/288792/en-us

I think that turning this option off allows you a little more control on the layout in that you have to specify your spacing correctly yourself and not rely on Word to help you.

I am not sure, perhaps Word 2013 solves this issue as the internal layout engine was rewritten for it, and it's just a problem with Word 2010.

Here's some more background:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showth ... -Word-2010
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/offi ... 4ec6d20852

Anyway, I will try to use this option (seems to be working at the moment!) and see where I get with it.
So thanks again for your earlier input it got me thinking in the right direction! :)

Tim
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Thanks for the detailed explanation Timmeh,

And glad to hear that you've found a working solution!

Regards,
Stefan
RedSharpEye
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by RedSharpEye »

Turns out that there is something that affects it: "HTML paragraph Auto Spacing". There's an option in Word in the "Compatibility" section named "Don't use HTML paragraph Auto Spacing" and if you check this, your document's layout shifts slightly, but now the jump targets are generated fine by PDF X-Change for any amount of "before" spacing.
Yay this worked for me! I had an issue that bookmarks generated didn't seem to be in the right position when clicked. I was forever going through the generated pdf and manually adjusting the page locations and clicking "set destination" for each bookmark in turn.

With "Don't use HTML paragraph Auto Spacing" checked the issue has been resolved.

Thank you Timmeh, :D :D

Red
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Paul - Tracker Supp
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Re: Bookmarks and half-hidden headers

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

:D
Best regards

Paul O'Rorke
Tracker Support North America
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