A reflowable document is a type of

electronic document An electronic document is a document that can be sent in non-physical means, such as telex, email, and the internet. Originally, any computer data were considered as something internal—the final data output was always on paper. However, the ...

that can adapt its

presentation A presentation conveys information from a speaker to an audience. Presentations are typically demonstrations, introduction, lecture, or speech meant to inform, persuade, inspire, motivate, build goodwill, or present a new idea/product. Presenta ...

to the

output device An output device is any piece of computer hardware that converts information or data into a human-perceptible form or, historically, into a physical machine-readable form for use with other non-computerized equipment. It can be text, graphics, ta ...

. Typical

prepress Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress process includes the preparation of artwork for press, media ...

or fixed page size output formats like

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

are not reflowable during the actual printing process because the page is not resized. For

end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrato ...

s, the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

standard,

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

is a reflowable format as is the case with any resizable electronic page format. In contrast to end user terminology, the notion of reflow is sometimes used to discuss

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...

program features for print publication

page layout In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives. The high-level page layout involves deciding on the ...

such as automatically balancing the amount of text in a number of columns. Reflow is not limited to text; 21st century

scorewriter A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and p ...

s enable music notation to be reflowed between systems and pages in a similar way to how text reflows between lines and pages.

Examples

Besides HTML, commercially available systems include: *

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes stylized as ''ePUB''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smart ...

is a simple reflowable format that allows a single column with

inline image The data URI scheme is a Uniform resource identifier, uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in Web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This techni ...

s, in many ways similar to a stripped-down HTML. *

Windows Presentation Foundation Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source user interface framework for Windows-based desktop applications. WPF applications are based in .NET, and are primarily developed using C# and XAML. Originally developed by Microso ...

(WPF) introduced XAML-based documents together with a viewer call "SinglePageViewer" that can reflow any WPF objects. However the XPS document standard also introduced by Microsoft with WPF does not support reflow. * Tagged

documents can contain an additional data layer that (among other things) allows content to reflow within the boundaries of one original page. * FictionBook is a free reflowable format by design. It does not specify the appearance of a document; instead, it describes its structure. For example, there are special tags for epigraphs, verses and quotations. *

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

Kindle File Format Kindle File Format is a proprietary e-book file format created by Amazon.com that can be downloaded and read on devices like smartphones, tablets, computers, or e-readers that have Amazon's Kindle app. E-book files in the Kindle File Format ...

, but only in its newest version.

Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

has developed an experimental system that allows the reflow of any document using OCR layout analysis at word-level.

References

Electronic publishing {{Digital-typography-stub