[Bug 1551949] Re: Printing to PDF file loses URLs/links

Tue Feb 12 05:12:43 UTC 2019

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On 2008-09-07T13:46:39+00:00 Paul-noble wrote:

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070206 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070206 Firefox/3.0.1

Using Firefox to create a PDF of a web page, all hyperlinks are lost.
The same process in Safari results in all hyperlinks being retained in
the saved PDF file.

Though it may relate to the PDF plug-in issue, I could not find specific
reference to this in prior bug reports.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.File > Print > PDF > Save as PDF.
2. View using Preview (default).
3. (Tried also viewing the same PDF files on a PC using Acrobat reader.)

Actual Results:  
PDF file does not retain hyperlinks.

Expected Results:  
PDF file should retain hyperlinks.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/0

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On 2008-09-10T23:25:44+00:00 Smichaud wrote:

I can confirm this (that the hyperlinks are preserved in Safari but
not in Firefox 3.0.1 on OS X 10.5.4).

The same thing happens printing to a PDF file on Linux -- so this is
presumably a cross-platform problem.

The hyperlinks aren't preserved printing to PDF from FF2, so this
isn't a regression.

The hyperlinks aren't preserved printing to a PDF file in Opera, but
they are in another WebKit browser (Shiira).  So there may be some
clues how to do this (preserve the hyperlinks) in WebKit source code.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/1

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On 2008-09-22T09:33:44+00:00 Mats-l wrote:

*** Bug 456329 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/2

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On 2016-03-02T19:01:05+00:00 Liam Morland wrote:

*** Bug 772291 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/5

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On 2016-03-02T19:19:09+00:00 Mkmelin+mozilla wrote:

*** Bug 1252614 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/6

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On 2018-07-04T20:20:42+00:00 Overholt-u wrote:

*** Bug 519563 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/8

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On 2018-07-08T18:17:26+00:00 Stewart wrote:

I argue that this is an enhancement request, not a bug.  You can't
hyperlink a bit of ink on a piece of paper, so it's not surprising that
when an application renders a document for printing it doesn't put
hyperlinks in it.  Putting hyperlinks in a PDF file is thus outside the
scope of printing, and something that we can choose to add as an
enhancement.

On the other hand, if we had a specific feature to save a web page as a
PDF (requested in bug 162659), then how this behaves would be another
matter.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/9

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On 2018-07-25T12:47:26+00:00 Mozillabz wrote:

Who says PDFs are printed on paper? Storing articles in PDF is standard
proceedure for me and basic workflow. The fact that I use the macOS
print dialog is just historical legacy in how "Save to PDF" has evolved
in macOS. I really would love to see this. It's a bit painful having to
switch browsers just to be able to have a PDF of an article where I do
not loose all hyperlinks.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/13

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On 2018-07-25T23:47:19+00:00 Stewart wrote:

(In reply to steve-_- from comment #7)
> Who says PDFs are printed on paper?

Nobody.

Printing, as a concept, is putting ink onto paper or a similar medium.
If a particular OS has PDF output built into its printing facility, or
the computer has on it a printer driver for generating PDF files, then
normally the content of the PDF generated thereby will be the same as
the content of the paper document that the printing facility would
ordinarily produce.  Because printing isn't designed to do things that
can't be done with ink on paper.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be useful (though it should be done by
implementing bug 162659, so that the feature isn't exclusive to the
macOS version), just that producing hyperlinked documents isn't what
printing is designed to do.  Hence my claim that this is an enhancement
request.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/14

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On 2018-08-24T11:16:10+00:00 Gfmozillabug wrote:

Also reported by an Ubuntu user on Ubuntu Launchpad Tracker:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949
Thanks
G

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/16

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On 2019-02-11T08:22:45+00:00 Mozillabz wrote:

Noticed that when saving as pdf on macOS via print dialog, links are
intact when using Firefox 66.0b6. Has this bug been fixed?

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/17

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On 2019-02-11T08:25:17+00:00 Mozillabz wrote:

(In reply to steve-_- from comment #10)

> Noticed that when saving as pdf on macOS via print dialog, links are intact when using Firefox 66.0b6. Has this bug been fixed?
Sorry, excuse the noise, it's just that URLs are clickable. But links behind text are still lost :(

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1551949/comments/18

** Changed in: thunderbird
   Importance: High => Wishlist

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Title:
  Printing to PDF file loses URLs/links

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