PDF glossary
Content stream
The list of drawing instructions that paints a PDF page: text, lines, shapes and images, in order.
A PDF page is not a picture and not a word processor document. It's a program: a sequence of operators such as 'set font', 'move to this point', 'show these glyphs' and 'draw this image'. That sequence is stored in one or more content streams attached to the page.
Text inside a content stream is stored as glyph codes, not necessarily as readable characters, and each piece of text is positioned absolutely. There are no paragraphs or lines in the file, only positioned runs of glyphs.
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