There is a standard from Adobe that in theory specifies opening PDF documents from a link clicked in a browser in a way to open specific sections (AKA "anchor", "named reference") of PDF document. This functionality should be of great help if one would like to refer to a specific portion of large PDF (such as some standard or specification).
However, from what I see now, support for this standard is close to non-existent.
For example, these links should open Scala Reference PDF at section 3.2.6, "Annotated Types":
- http://www.scala-lang.org/docu/files/ScalaReference.pdf#subsection.3.2.6
- http://www.scala-lang.org/docu/files/ScalaReference.pdf#nameddest=subsection.3.2.6
- http://www.scala-lang.org/docu/files/ScalaReference.pdf#page=23
(Techincally, variant #3 should open page #23, which is essentially the same destination)
Is there a working way (may be with a couple of shims, proprietary wrappers or whatever else) to make this work on majority of systems? What is the usage share of Adobe Reader plugin, should I care about other systems?
If it's not possible, at least I'd like to find a working solution for every platform (i.e. Windows, Linux, Mac) that I could recommend to my site's users if they want to be able to use named destination links.
From what I've tested:
- Windows, MSIE/Firefox/Chrome, Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin - all variants work with version 9+, but:
- MSIE has a weird caching issue (i.e. anchor does not work until document was cached)
- Older versions do not work
- It has issues with link format: generally, it should be regular absolute link to a real web server, starting with "http://". Relative links, samba-style links (
\\HOST\dir\file.pdf#something
), anything else besides "http" (or probably, "https") scheme won't work
- Windows, any browsers set up to run Adobe Acrobat Reader as a separate process - does not work
- Windows, any browsers, FoxIt Reader - does not work
- Windows, any browsers, CutePDF - does not work
- Linux/Konqueror/Okular - only variant #1 works
- Linux, any other browsers set up to run Okular or any other PDF viewer as external process - does not work (as browser does not pass any "#arguments" in a command line)
- Any OS, Firefox 15+ PDF.js internal PDF viewer - does not work
I'd appreciate if you'd try it to test in various different combinations.