Create related links to external files or web sites

This procedure uses a text editor to put a series of links to related topics on remote systems or to files outside the repository.

About this task

You can make related links to websites and FTP locations, as well as to files outside the repository.

When you are linking to files you may use either absolute or relative pathnames. However, you should keep in mind that setups vary in different machines. You can safely use relative pathnames if you are sure that multiple documents will always be sent as a single package. However, if there’s a chance that only a portion of the files will be sent, and that the target file isn’t among them, then the link may become invalid.

Procedure

  1. Open the topic in your XML editor.
  2. Place the cursor where you want to insert the related links.
  3. Insert a <related-links> tag with a <link> tag inside it.
  4. Add href and scope attributes to the link tag.
    Your link tag should look like this: <link href="" scope=""/>
  5. Type the location you want to reference between the quotation marks of the href attribute; then type the word "external" between the quotation marks of the scope attribute.
    The following table shows the location types accepted by the href attribute and their syntax.
    Location type Syntax
    Web site http://sitename
    Secure web site https://sitename
    FTP site ftp://sitename
    Secure FTP site ftps://sitename
    Local file file://driveletter/filename
    Your completed code should look something like this:
    <related-links>
     <link href="http://www.google.ca" scope="external"/>
</related-links>
    Tip: Add a comment explaining the link just above the <link> tag, if the target name isn't totally intuitive.
  6. Optional: Insert additional link tags as needed.