URLs on notes page not clickable

[ferdinand-fichtner]

See the issue below. Thank you for any suggestions how to overcome this problem.

Environment

• MS Windows 10
• Python 3.7

Pympress

• ver 1.4.1
• binary installer

Expected behaviour

URLs on a second screen notes page should be clickable

Steps to reproduce

\documentclass{beamer} %
\usepackage{pgfpages}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen}
\begin{document}
  \begin{frame}{Foo}
    Some content\\
    and a Test link: \url{http://www.google.com}
    \note{\begin{itemize}
      \item Other content
      \item Test link: \url{http://www.google.com}
    \end{itemize}}
  \end{frame}
\end{document}

test_slide.pdf

Problem

The link on the presentation page (left screen) is clickable and opens a browser window. The link on the notes page (right screen) is not clickable. This is independent of the document being compiled with XeLatex, PDFLatex or dvips/ps2pdf. Clicking works as expected in other viewers (Sumatra, Adobe Acrobat).

From pympress.log (possibly unrelated):

INFO:__main__:Pympress: 1.4.1 ; Python: 3.7.4 ; OS: Windows 10 ; Gtk 3.24.10 ; GLib 2.60.4 ; Poppler 0.78.0 cairo ; Cairo 1.16.0 , pycairo 1.18.1 ; Media: Gif-Wiedergabe mit GtkImage, VLC 3.0.8 Vetinari
WARNING:pympress.ui:Inhalts- und Präsentator-Fenster werden nicht im Vollbild gestartet, da nur ein Monitor vorhanden ist
CRITICAL:__main__:Uncaught exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\projects\pympress/pympress/ui.py", line 470, in save_and_quit
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_state'

[Cimbali]

Thanks for reporting ! The links of the “current page” preview in the presenter window (what you call the “right screen”, so next to the notes widget) do work, right? That would provide a workaround if the links in the notes are simply reproducing the links in the displayed slide.

Interestingly, the link on the notes page does not seem to work with the PDF you provide in okular, and when I open it with adobe reader (the only/old version for Linux, v9.5.5 from April 2013) only the link in the notes part works, not the one in the main page.

Regardless, there seem to be 3 URI annotations in the PDF, all pointing to www.google.com, so I would expect them to behave correctly.

[Cimbali]

What seems to be the problem are the coordinates of the link annotations in the pdf. This is some debug output printing the locations of the links, in absolute numbers and relative positions (%):

URI at x1=93.253 y1=162.590 x2=203.091 y2=175.860 / w=725.670 h=272.130
       x1=12.851% y1=59.747% x2=27.987% y2=64.624%
     -> http://www.google.com
URI at x1=376.695 y1=336.577 x2=496.967 y2=351.108 / w=725.670 h=272.130
       x1=51.910% y1=123.682% x2=68.484% y2=129.022%
     -> http://www.google.com
URI at x1=104.568 y1=132.482 x2=224.841 y2=147.013 / w=725.670 h=272.130
       x1=14.410% y1=48.683% x2=30.984% y2=54.023%
     -> http://www.google.com

x coordinates are 0 at the left-most edge of the full slide (content + notes), and 725 or 100% at the right-most edge. y coordinates are 0 at the bottom and of the slide and 272 or 100% at the top of the slide.

As you can see the 3rd URI is placed correctly and corresponds to the link in the current slide. The 1st URI is placed incorrectly a little higher and to the left of the link in the current slide (hovering the mouse over there show the mouse as a pointer). The 2nd URI is placed out of the bounds of the slide as the y coordinates are over 100%.

Even when removing any fancy templating of the notes slide (i.e. \setbeamertemplate{note page}{\insertnote}) it seems that the location of the URIs is incorrect. In particular, the first link (in both tests) is the one in the notes slide, and its coordinates in the annotation appear to be shifted left by 50%. Basically the annotations for links in the notes half of the page seem shifted at the same position but in the other half of the page.

[ferdinand-fichtner]

Thank you for looking into this and, by the way, thank you for providing this unique tool!

Your finding regarding the positioning of the URI is interesting. I find it a bit puzzling that other PDF viewers seem to not have this problem. If I open the file in Sumatra or Acrobat, the link in the notes page is clickable and the URI appears to be positioned correctly. Does this fit with your observation?

[Cimbali]

I’m afraid I don’t have Sumatra or Acrobat to test here. I’ll report the bug at the pgf repo and see what they have to say about it.

[ferdinand-fichtner]

Thank you!

[Cimbali]

Compiling with \hypersetup{pdfborder={0 0 1}} as suggested in the pgf issue confirms that the location of the link in the notes is wrong. I’ll close this issue as apparently nothing is wrong with pympress − feel free to follow the linked pgf issue.

[qukhan]

For people reaching this issue after hours of search. The linked pgf issue provides a hacky solution for the \href command. It can be extended to \url.

Here's the full hack.

\makeatletter
\AtBeginNote{%
   \let\hyper@link@\hyper@link@note%
   \let\hyper@linkurl\hyper@linkurl@note%
}
\AtEndNote{%
   \let\hyper@link@\hyper@link@default%
   \let\hyper@linkurl\hyper@linkurl@default%
}
\let\hyper@link@default\hyper@link@
\let\hyper@linkurl@default\hyper@linkurl
\def\hyper@link@note[#1]#2#3#4{%
   \begingroup%
      \parbox[t][0pt][t]{0pt}{%
         \hfuzz=\maxdimen%
         \hspace*{\paperwidth}%
         \vbox{\hyper@link@default[{#1}]{#2}{#3}{\phantom{#4}}}%
      }%
      \Hy@colorlink\@urlcolor#4\Hy@xspace@end\Hy@endcolorlink%
   \endgroup%
}
\def\hyper@linkurl@note#1#2{%
   \begingroup%
      \parbox[t][0pt][t]{0pt}{%
         \hfuzz=\maxdimen%
         \hspace*{\paperwidth}%
         \vbox{\hyper@linkurl@default{\phantom{#1}}{#2}}%
      }%
      \begingroup%
      \Hy@colorlink\@urlcolor#1\Hy@xspace@end\Hy@endcolorlink%
      \endgroup%
   \endgroup%
}
\makeatother

[Cimbali]

Actually I disagree with @Cimbali from 2019, this shouldn’t be closed.

It’s an ongoing issue that we just can’t do anything about, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t track it.