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windowsuri

Is it possible to specify a URI to a pdf that points to a specific page?

I'm specifically curious about Windows, but answers about different OS are interesting too.

Afaik in URLs a specific PDF page can be indicated by adding a #page=<page number> field. According to the URI specification, fields (using the #<field> syntax) and queries (using the ?<key>=<value> syntax) should be possible. However, URIs of the form file:///path_to_document.pdf#page=20 or file:///path_to_document.pdf?page=20 didn't work for me, Windows is interpreting the whole string as a path, which it then can't find.

Is there any way to accomplish this? I couldn't find anything online.

Solution

  • When calling files from the Operating System there are rules that are system based. So calling a file from OS needs a certain syntax, that needs quoting for some characters, so these work, whatever the default PDF handler may be:- enter image description here

    That default handler may include a different page switch syntax such as exe -page ## filename.

    enter image description here

    When using a URL you need a URL handler, so this will work in Windows

    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" "file:///C:/Apps/PDF/poppler/%2333.pdf#page=20"

    The URL can be on a LAN server and windows will often fiddle with the usage of \ and / but not aways accept both. So the rule is "use quotes" AND replace system punctuation with safe characters AND ensure "Remember last page" is not active.

    enter image description here

    The use of # fragments for PDF navigation was introduced by Adobe for their Acrobat plug-in and has in parts been adopted by some browser plug-ins . So some work one way in Chrome but some can be different name or behaviour in FireFox, so beware which browser you use as default.

    One example is #search= works well in FireFox but is totally different in Chromium. #:~:text=Chromium but does not work with PDF nor this page !

    In comments you mentioned Obsidian which is a closed product (not open source for easy modifications). What I found is it need an object per link thus in the vault you would need to use a window.lnk file as the shim from internal to external calling

    enter image description here

    in the vault it would be

    Open 3pages.pdf @ page 2 [page 2 of 3Pages.pdf](file:///C:%5CApps%5CPIM%5CObsidian%5C3Pages.pdf%20-%20Shortcut.lnk)

    externally the shortcut could be

    "C:\Program Files\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe" -page 2 C:\Apps\PIM\Obsidian\vault\3Pages.pdf

    As I tested this workaround each link would be a highly wasteful 4Kb of disk space, so there are perhaps better ways to call 1 file with 2 arguments, which works in many cases as a "Shim", however there are open source plug-ins that are perhaps close enough to adapt see https://github.com/MichalBures/obsidian-file-path-to-uri