Preferred/Standard for opening a file from hypertext link?

Question

I wondered if there was a most preferred way to open another fm doc from a hyptertext doc from a useability/customer preference point of view.
Openlink?
Opennew?
Openlinkfitwin?
Which is best?
-Laurie

Answer 1

Laurie,
The main difference between any of the "goto..." vs "open..." hypertext options is that the goto's open the doc in the current window, whereas the open's create new independent windows for FM hypertext docs. When going to PDFs, then there is no difference in behaviour. Another difference is that the "open" requires a filename, whereas a "goto" doesn't.
If you want the links to open in separate windows in PDFs, then you need to be aware that this is under user control and cannot be specified in the PDF document. The user needs to have their Preferences > General > Documents setting for "Open cross-document links in same window" enabled.
Any of the "fitwin" commands are ignored when creating PDFs.
The "message openfile" launches a file in it's associated application.
The "message URL" (Go to URL hypertex command) links to a URL/email client/newsgroup/etc.
If you need to create named destinations for targets from PDFs or html files to link to, then be aware the using the Newlink command results in FM prepending "M8.newlink." before your named destination. When the file is used in a book, then FM modifies this prefix to be of the form "M[n].8." where the n=1,2,3... depending upon the file's position in the book. These prefixes are meant to create unique targets if the same valid newlink is used in diffrent files when combined into one PDF. To get around this you either prepend your source jumps to the targets with the appropriate prefix or use anchored postscript text frames to create "/DEST pdfmark [linkname]"  entries or Shlomo Perets' TimeSavers tool to clean-up the destination markers after FM has tweaked them.