SECTION F.3
1043
Hint Tables
ITEM
SIZE (BITS)
DESCRIPTION
5
See Table F.3, item 12
(One item for each shared object referenced from the page)
The numerator of
the fractional position for each shared object reference, in the same order as
the preceding item. The fraction indicates where in the page’s content stream
the shared object is first referenced. This item is interpreted as the numerator
of a fraction whose denominator is specified once for the entire document
If the denominator is
d,
a numerator ranging from 0 to
d
−
1 indicates the
corresponding portion of the page’s content stream. For example, if the
denominator is 4, a numerator of 0, 1, 2, or 3 indicates that the first reference
lies in the first, second, third, or fourth quarter of the content stream, respec-
tively.
There are two (or more) other possible values for the numerator, which indi-
cate that the shared object is not referenced from the content stream but is
needed by annotations or other objects that are drawn after the contents. The
value
d
indicates that the shared object is needed before image XObjects and
other nonshared objects that are at the end of the page. A value of
d
+
1 or
greater indicates that the shared object is needed after those objects.
This method of dividing the page into fractions is only approximate. Deter-
mining the first reference to a shared object entails inspecting the unencoded
content stream. The relationship between positions in the unencoded and
encoded streams is not necessarily linear.
6
See Table F.3, item 7
A number that, when added to the least offset to the start of the content
stream (Table F.3, item 6), gives the offset in bytes of the start of the page’s
content stream (the stream object, not the stream data), relative to the begin-
ning of the page. (See implementation note 183 in Appendix H.)
A number that, when added to the least content stream length (Table F.3,
item 8), gives the length of the page’s content stream in bytes. This length in-
cludes object overhead preceding and following the stream data. (See imple-
7
See Table F.3, item 9
F.3.2 Shared Object Hint Table
The shared object hint table gives information required to locate shared objects
(see Section F.2.8, “Shared Objects (Part 8)”). Shared objects can be physically
located in either of two places: objects that are referenced from the first page are
located with the first-page objects (part 6); all other shared objects are located in
the shared objects section (part 8).