Galley-proof PDFs (WAS proposal to omit pdf generation of reference manual)

(not really a Maxima discussion any more...)

On 3/11/07, Harald Geyer <Harald.Geyer at gmx.at> wrote:
> You can define pages of arbitrary size. But I guess most pdf readers
> will run out of memory when rendering it. (I don't know if there are
> renderers clever enough to only render the visible part of the page.)

Really? I thought all vector-to-pixel engines worked hard to make
viewing windows work well. Are PDF readers using a more primitive
renderer than Display Postscript?

> TeX tries very hard to handle page breaks well. Cutting these pages
> together would yield a suboptimal result.

Yes, it's annoying how much effort has gone into page-break methods
when so much is being read online now.  But surely there is a dynamic
renderer for TeX by now, which handles window resizing etc.
gracefully?  Or is TeX still married to paper?

           -s