🚀 go-pugleaf

Abhigyan is 100% on the mark with his response.

The PDF/A standard (ISO 19005-1) clearly states in section 6.6.3: 

      Conforming interactive readers may choose to make hyperlinks >non-actionable,
      but in addition to the rendering behaviour defined by PDF Reference, as
      modified by this part of ISO 19005, they shall >provide a mechanism to
      display the F and D keys of a GoToR action >dictionary, the URI key of
      a URI action dictionary, and the F key of a SubmitForm action dictionary.




As such, Adobe Acrobat & Reader 9 are simply following the rules as defined in that standard.

In addition to that requirement, there are about another 10 requirements for "conforming readers" laid out in the standard - all of which are ONLY ENABLED when you have the "PDF/A View Mode" option set to "When documents are compliant with PDF/A"...again, as required by the standard. IF you turn that option to Never, you are no longer in compliance with PDF/A :(.

Leonard Rosenthol
ISO Project Leader/Editor - PDF/A (ISO 19005)