Linearizing PDF scans

J. David Bryan jdbryan at acm.org
Sat Aug 14 17:54:23 CDT 2021


On Saturday, August 14, 2021 at 12:22, ben via cctech wrote:

> I tend to have my PDF's on portable device, so PDF's need to be easy
> to use on those devices.

Linearizing keeps PDFs as complete files but rearranges (and expands) them 
internally so that individual pages can be rendered from a subrange of 
bytes sent by the server.  Before linearization, the information necessary 
to render a given page is scattered around the PDF file, so typically the 
whole file must be downloaded before displaying the page.  Once the whole 
file is present locally, there's no difference in access or display whether 
linearized or not.

I guess the operative question is whether people tend to view PDF pages on 
a server or download files and view them locally.

Thanks.

                                      -- Dave



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