[pdftex] Reflowing text

[Hans Hagen]

Morten Høgholm wrote:

> We just had a near-blind user with a not so small problem. He uses the  
> Reflow feature in Adobe Reader but when used on a pdf stemming form 
> LaTeX  it causes all spaces to be ignored and thus makes the text 
> completely  unreadable. I take it this is where we have to say "tagged 
> pdf" but has  anyone done any work in that field? (It seems like there 
> was a thread on  this in May 2003 (Tagged PDF) but nothing came out of it.)

some dtp programs or word processors write stings into the pdf as

   (this is a string)

they depend on the kerning in the font tables (if present)

tex on the other hand applies (explicit) kerning,

   (th) pdf code (i) pdf code (s) pdf code (a) ....

and so, for a reflow acrobat needs to recompose the text (as it does for the 
search engine); from what you say it looks like the reflow code is rather dumb 
(contrary to the search code)

Hans



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