On 24/04/2025 15:06, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
On Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 11:32:23AM +0800, jeremy ardley wrote:
ISO 14289 is an accessibility standard for PDF. It allows for the creation
of a "Tagged PDF" where semantic information, including table structures
(<Table>, <TR>, <TH>, <TD>), can be embedded in a separate logical structure
tree
The problem is that very few authors know this - and very few tools support
tagging. Adobe Acrobat is about the best but the $$ versions.
I have not looked at this topic closely, so I am unsure what is real
state of affairs. In the news I noticed the following (the question is
whether it is relevant to tables)
- texlive recently announced support of PDF tagging.
- perhaps in some blog related to Chromium I have seen their intention
to make PDF files generated by browser accessible.
- not sure, I can easily confuse it with some other feature, but maybe
some relatively new open source HTML to PDF converter declared support
of tagging.
The result is that PDFs may well be completely fine as a secure archival
format, non-modifiable, readable everywhere
As to the last item, I am aware that PDF reflow feature exist and it is
must have for narrow screens (so it is not uncommon on e.g. Android) or
when a user needs really large fonts. However I have never tried to
evaluate what free tools are able to make PDFs suitable for reflow.
Another question is how to represent a wide table on a smartphone
screen, otherwise it is not "everywhere" nowadays.
