Getting Started with PDF Reflow (Drake) SDK — Features & Examples

Getting Started with PDF Reflow (Drake) SDK — Features & Examples

Overview

PDF Reflow (Drake) SDK is a developer toolkit for converting fixed-layout PDFs into reflowable, responsive document layouts suitable for web and mobile. It extracts structural elements (text, images, tables) and maps them to semantic, flowable components so content adapts to different screen sizes and accessibility needs.

Key Features

• Accurate Structural Extraction: Detects headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and footnotes with confidence scores.
• Style Preservation: Maps fonts, sizes, weights, colors, and inline formatting (bold/italic/underline) to CSS-friendly styles.
• Responsive Layout Output: Produces HTML/CSS or intermediate JSON describing flowable content for client-side rendering.
• Image & Media Handling: Extracts embedded images with coordinates and provides alternatives (inline, responsive, or lazy-loaded).
• Table Reflowing: Converts complex table layouts into accessible, responsive table structures or stacked representations for small screens.
• Accessibility Support: Outputs semantic tags, ARIA attributes, and reading-order metadata to improve screen-reader compatibility.
• Language & Encoding Support: Handles Unicode text, right-to-left scripts, and multi-column layouts.
• Performance Modes: Batch processing for large volumes and low-latency mode for interactive use.
• Error Reporting & Confidence Scores: Per-element confidence metrics and structured error logs to guide post-processing.
• SDK Integrations: Client libraries for major languages (e.g., Java, JavaScript, Python, .NET) and REST API endpoints.

Typical Workflow

1. Initialize SDK client with API credentials (or local engine).
2. Submit PDF file or URL for analysis.
3. Select output format: HTML/CSS, EPUB, plain JSON, or custom mapping.
4. Optionally provide layout hints (target viewport width, primary language, reading order).
5. Receive structured output with element bounding boxes, semantic roles, styles, and confidence scores.
6. Render output in-app or post-process for styling, accessibility tweaks, or analytics.

Example Outputs (conceptual)

• HTML/CSS snippet preserving headings and paragraphs.
• JSON schema describing a document as a list of blocks: { “type”:“heading”,“level”:2,“text”:“Chapter 1”,“bbox”:[x,y,w,h],“confidence”:0.98 }
• Responsive table conversion:
  • Desktop: standardwith columns.
  • Mobile: stacked key–value pairs per row.

Code Examples (pseudocode)

JavaScript (upload + get HTML):

javascript
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const client = new DrakeReflow({ apiKey: ‘APIKEY’ });
const result = await client.reflowFile(‘file.pdf’, { output: ‘html’, viewportWidth: 375 });
renderInnerHTML(result.html);

python
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from drake_reflow import Client c = Client(api_key=‘API_KEY’)
doc = c.reflow(‘file.pdf’, output=‘json’)
for block in doc[‘blocks’]:
    if block[‘type’]==‘image’:
        download(block[‘url’])