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In the acronym package, the starred commands \ac* and \acp* omit the acronym from the list of acronyms with option "printonlyused". My problem is that acronyms inserted like this are still hyperref links in PDFs created with pdflatex. I would like to have link-free acronyms if they are inserted with the starred commands and thus are not in the acronym table. How would I do this?

In the example below, pdflatex creates three pages, a dummy page 1, the acronym table on page 2 and two acronyms used on page 3. The first acronym correctly links to the acronym table. However, the starred command also is a hyperref. In my trials, all starred commands produced hyperref links to page 1, which has nothing to do with acronyms at all.

\documentclass{article}

\PassOptionsToPackage{printonlyused}{acronym}
\usepackage{acronym}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}
the initial page

\newpage
the acronym page

\begin{acronym}
  \acro{AAA}{Aaa Abb Acc}
  \acro{TMN}{This Means Nothing}
\end{acronym}

\newpage
\ac{AAA}
\ac*{TMN}

\end{document}
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1 Answer 1

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For starred versions of its commands acronym calls \AC@starredtrue. We can use this to redefine \AC@hyperlink to only produce a hyperlink if a non-starred version is used. Without hyperref \AC@hyperlink essentially is the same as \@secondoftwo and with hyperref it is \let to \hyperlink at begin document. This means the redefinition should be done with the \AtBeginDocument hook.

The following definition lets \AC@hyperlink use \@secondoftwo in starred versions and \hyperlink in the non-starred versions.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[printonlyused]{acronym}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\makeatletter
\AtBeginDocument{%
  \renewcommand*\AC@hyperlink{%
    \ifAC@starred
      \expandafter\@secondoftwo
    \else
      \expandafter\hyperlink
    \fi
  }%
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
the initial page

\newpage
the acronym page

\begin{acronym}
  \acro{AAA}{Aaa Abb Acc}
  \acro{TMN}{This Means Nothing}
\end{acronym}

\newpage
\ac{AAA}
\ac*{TMN}

\end{document}

enter image description here

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  • Thank you very much! This is what I wanted. In your description you say "Without hyperref \AC@hyperlink essentially is the same as \@secondoftwo". Are there any side effects associated with the 'essentially' that I need to know about to avoid them?
    – KlausenK
    Mar 17, 2014 at 9:04
  • 1
    @KlausKopec no I don't think so. \@secondoftwo is defined with \long and \AC@hyperlink isn't. See tex.stackexchange.com/a/1057/5049 for background on this
    – cgnieder
    Mar 17, 2014 at 9:41
  • can this easily be made into a patch for the sty file so that I can forward it as suggestion to the package maintainer?
    – KlausenK
    Apr 17, 2014 at 16:06
  • If you refer to this question the package maintainer should be able to adapt it easily enough if he wants to
    – cgnieder
    Apr 17, 2014 at 22:00
  • I realize that, but unfortunately he seems to have lost interest in the package. He literally said that he'll not do it unless a patch is submitted. Maybe the package ist best abandoned in that case in favor of glossaries or s.th. similar. Thank you for your help!
    – KlausenK
    Apr 18, 2014 at 21:11

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