Disabling all document interactivity (for PDF/X compliance)

Question

I am working on making my XeLaTeX-compiled PDF file compliant with PDF/X-1a:2001 standard.

When I use this answer with TeXLive 2015, document validates fully (in Acrobat Pro DC). However, when I test same solution on my actual document, which includes chapters, table of contents and other interactivity, I get errors.

I compiled code below with xelatex -output-driver="xdvipdfmx -V 3" pdfx.tex:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{atbegshi}
\AtBeginShipout{
    \special{pdf: put @thispage
      <<
        /TrimBox [0 0 210.990 162.086]
      >>
    }
}
\special{pdf: put @thispage
  <<
    /TrimBox [0 0 210.990 162.086]
  >>
}
\special{pdf:docinfo
  <<
    /GTS_PDFXVersion (PDF/X-1:2001)
    /GTS_PDFXConformance (PDF/X-1a:2001)
  >>
}

\special{pdf:put @catalog
<<
  /PageMode /UseNone
  /OutputIntents [
    <<
      /Info (none)
      /Type /OutputIntent
      /S /GTS_PDFX
      /OutputConditionIdentifier (Custom)
      /RegistryName (http://www.color.org/)
    >>
  ]
>>
}%

\usepackage{datetime}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{% 
    pdftitle={Title},
    pdfinfo={
        ModDate={D:\pdfdate},
        Trapped={False},      
   },
}


\begin{document}
\chapter{Some chapter}
\chapter{Some chapter}
\chapter{Some chapter}
\chapter{Some chapter}
\end{document}

and resulting PDF validation outputs "Document contains actions" error in Acrobat:

Some documents I tested also throw following error: "Annotation inside page area", which points to table of contents generated with \tableofcontents command and internal links generated with \hyperlink command. (Hyperlinks are in the document, as basically same source is used for generation of interactive document and print version.)

So problem is interactivity in document.

I tried to disable it by changing

\usepackage{hyperref}

to

\usepackage[draft]{hyperref}

but this not only disables interactivity added by hyperref, but also skips hypersetup, which results in document modification date, title and trapped key not being included in compiled PDF. Effect: there is no error regarding interactivity, but document is still not compliant with PDF/X-1a:2001, since it requires hypersetup metadata to be included.

How can I completely disable all interactivity in a document while still making hypersetup work?

In theory, I could redefine/overwrite all "interactive" hyperref commands as well as all my custom commands that use interactivity (at the very end of the preamble, so that all earlier definitions are overwritten):

…
\def \hyperlink#1#2{#2}
\def \href#1#2{#2}
\def \url#1{#1}
\begin{document}
…

but:

• I am not sure how can I disable interactivity of \pageref without loosing page number in the document
• This approach is very document-specific, as it requires checking where exactly interactivity was added and by which commands
• While it works for some of the documents I tested it with, it doesn't do the trick for MWE above.

Is there any more straightforward/generic way to disable interactivity globally in whole document?

Answer 1

The NoHyper environment might do what you are looking for: inside its scope, most hyperref features are disabled, by redefining the internal macros hyperref uses to produce links so that they do nothing. However, in contrast to the draft package option, it does not deactivate the creation of bookmarks, the inclusion of document information etc.

Usually, you would enclose the parts of your document where you want to diable links in

\begin{NoHyper}
    ...
\end{NoHyper}

In this case, as you want to avoid links throughout the whole document, it might be easier to just replace

\usepackage{hyperref}

in your example by

\usepackage[bookmarks=false]{hyperref}
\NoHyper

to disable links and bookmarks globally, while still being able to include metadata in the PDF file. Disabling bookmarks is a requirement, as their presence will trigger same validation error shown in the question.