#127 PDF hyperlinks

[Jim]

I would like to use Xournal to display PDF files in class.
Some of my PDF files have hyperlinks, which, when I am using acroread
to display the PDF file, allow me to bring up a web page, display a
video, or run a program (by clicking the link).

I realize this is probably not easy, but are there any thoughts to being
able to do this in Xournal (or Xournal++), assuming you are annotating
a PDF file?

[AndreasB]

Accepted for Xournal++. I think a new tool is necessary, also a "new cursor". I thought about this, but didn't implement it yet.

[Jim]

Great. If / when you need someone to test it out, you know where to find me.

[Emmanuel Favre-Nicolin]

This is a most wanted possibility in order to open video link for example. This would be especially usefull for teacher that uses xournal for online teaching because it would simplify incorporation of videos in video lesson or live lessons.

[Denis Auroux]

Unfortunately, Xournal just doesn't currently have the ability to
interpret the contents of a PDF file, such as for example its
hyperlinks. This is not impossible to implement, by asking Poppler
(which we already use to render PDF pages to serve as background for
xournal) to provide a list of hyperlinks and clickable areas, but it is
more work than I can manage in the foreseeable future. Xournal is also
not set up to figure out what software you'd want to use to open links;
I'd need to figure out how evince goes about it.

Basically, xournal is not a PDF viewer, it's handwritten notetaking
software that happens to let you write on top of PDF pages. A number of
features that would be expected in a PDF viewer are not there and would
all be great to include.

Denis

On 9/6/20 9:32 AM, Emmanuel Favre-Nicolin wrote:

This is a most wanted possibility in order to open video link for
example. This would be especially usefull for teacher that uses xournal
for online teaching because it would simplify incorporation of videos in
video lesson or live lessons.

[Lars Kellogg-Stedman]

Xournal is also
not set up to figure out what software you'd want to use to open links;
I'd need to figure out how evince goes about it.

For the record, Xournal doesn't need to know how to open links; it just needs to have a configuration option that is "command to open urls". Under MacOS this would probably be "open", under Linux this would probably be "xdg-open" (to use your default browser) or something like "firefox" or "google-chrome" (to use a specific browser).