Quote:
Originally Posted by Cpfoxhunt
What is pdf reflow?
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That's actually a fairly complicated question, Cpfoxhunt.
The short answer is that reflowing is taking the text content of a PDF and displaying it without the embedded layout information, so that they text "reflows" to fit the shape of the screen, rather than being locked into the line lengths set in the PDF itself.
The longer answer revolves around the fact that PDF is designed to preserve the
layout of a document: i.e. I can print it on my machine and someone on the total other side of the world can print it on their machine and the two print-outs will look exactly the same. To accomplish that, it holds things like line length and the arrangement of text and images on the "page" static, and relies on horizontal and vertical scrolling to allow a user to see the full virtual "page" when viewing the file on an electronic display.
e-Ink devices still have slow enough refresh rates (the speed of changing the display contents, I mean) that scrolling isn't really practical. This means that without reflow, all you can get is a shrunken image of the PDF page on an e-ink reader. As you might imagine, a letter size page, which is about 14" diagonally, can be a bit difficult to read when displayed on a 6" diagonal display.
But the new PRS505 firmware can strip all the formatting out of a PDF file when it displays it, and display the text at a size that can actually be read by normal folks.
That removing of formatting, with line lenghts appropriate to the display being used, is what we mean when we say "reflow."
Hope that's helpful.
