[Tex/LaTex] Is it possible to make LyX generate clickable hyperlinks into the PDF result

linkslyxpdf

Is there a way in LyX to set up a) a reference to a web resource by URL, b) a reference to another location in the same document, in a manner that turns the reference to a clickable link in the resulting PDF?

From the LyX manuals, it seems that this is not possible directly with LyX commands and buttons, but this sounds odd. If it’s not possible, what’s the simplest way of doing this via insertion of TeX code?

Best Answer

According to the LyX FAQ, you have to enable hyperref support in the document settings under PDF properties.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Embedding a PDF file with clickable external links into a LaTeX document

Quoting the pdfpages manual (page 2):

[...] all kinds of links¹ will get lost during inclusion. (Using \includepdf, \includegraphics, or other low-level commands.)

However, there's a gleam of hope. Some links may be extracted and later reinserted by a package called pax which can be downloaded from CTAN [3]. Have a look at it!

The pax package mentioned is actually a Java program which reads the PDF file, extracts the links and writes their positions to a .pax file. This information can be processed by an extended version of \includegraphics which reinserts the links at the correct position. However, the package is considered experimental and only works with pdfLaTeX.

This is how to use pax:

Download and install the package from CTAN.
Run pdfannotextractor.pl --install. This downloads and installs PDFBox, a Java library necessary for using pax.
Now you can run pdfannotextractor.pl <filename.pdf> in order to read the links from any given PDF file and write them to filename.pax.
In your LaTeX document, invoke \usepackage{pax}. This extends \includegraphics in order to read and process the auxiliary .pax file.

Regarding the cropping of the PDF file with Ghostscript: In my experiments, this seemed to confuse pax, resulting in wrong positions of the hyperlinks. So it's probably best to call wkhtmltopdf with

wkhtmltopdf -B 0mm -L 0mm -R 0mm -T 0mm

in order to not create any margin from the start.

This is my working test case (using the site https://tex.stackexchange.com/about):

Creation of the PDF and the annotation file:

wkhtmltopdf -B 0mm -L 0mm -R 0mm -T 0mm https://tex.stackexchange.com/about screenshot.pdf
pdfannotextractor.pl screenshot.pdf

LaTeX source code

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[margin=0mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{pax}

% Visible squares for demonstration purposes, can be removed without harm
% (change \iftrue to \iffalse or remove the following lines altogether)
\iftrue
  \usepackage{hyperref}
  \hypersetup{
    filebordercolor={1 1 0},
  }
\fi

\begin{document}
    \includegraphics[scale=0.9]{screenshot}
\end{document}

Result:

output result, with visible squares denoting hyperlinks

_{(The cyan boxes are there to prove that hyperlinks work, and can be removed without consequences.)}

[Tex/LaTex] Make Notes from Lyx into Annotations on the PDF

As far as the yellow LyX notes are completely lost in the generated LaTeX source (i.e, the .tex file), your goal seem impossible without touching the LyX's guts or deal with the original .lyx file. An easier starting point could be use the black comments for this purpose.

With this approach, you only have to transform a \begin{comment} note \end{comment} of the verbatim package in a \pdfcomment{note} of the pdfcomment package.

How-to:

1) Go to Document > Configuration... > LaTex preamble

2) Paste the following lines:

% Change comments in PDF notes
\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\usepackage{environ}
\RenewEnviron{comment}{\pdfcomment{\BODY}}

3) Go to Insert > Note > Comment) and write some text.

This left a comment environment in the .tex file. Example of the ouput in LyX:

MWE1

(you will see "Comment" instead of "Comentario" in a english OS, obviously...)

3) Go to File > Export > PDF(pdflatex)

4) Open the PDF open in Acrobat Reader:

MWE2

LyX-generated LaTeX source:

%% LyX 2.0.5.1 created this file.  For more info, see http://www.lyx.org/.
%% Do not edit unless you really know what you are doing.
\documentclass[english]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin9]{inputenc}
\usepackage{verbatim}

\makeatletter
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% User specified LaTeX commands.
%add this in Lyx Preamble 
\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\usepackage{environ}
\RenewEnviron{comment}{\pdfcomment{\BODY}}

\makeatother

\usepackage{babel}
\begin{document}
Plain text %
\begin{comment}
This is a note (comment)
\end{comment}

\end{document}

Minimal working example in plain LaTeX

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{verbatim}
\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\usepackage{environ}
\RenewEnviron{comment}{\pdfcomment{\BODY}}
\begin{document}
Plain text
\begin{comment}
This is a note (comment)
\end{comment}
\end{document}