# Tokenization & Casing — OCR Parsing Guardrails
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> - [**OCR_Parsing** — text recognition and document structure parsing](./README.md)
> - [**WFGY Global Fix Map** — main Emergency Room, 300+ structured fixes](../README.md)
> - [**WFGY Problem Map 1.0** — 16 reproducible failure modes](../../README.md)
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> Think of this page as a desk within a ward.
> If you need the full triage and all prescriptions, return to the Emergency Room lobby.
A focused fix page for post-OCR text where casing, spaces, or token boundaries are corrupted. Use this to normalize the stream **before** chunking/embedding, and verify with measurable targets. Works across Tesseract, Google DocAI, Azure OCR, ABBYY, PaddleOCR, and custom engines.
## When to use this page
- Words are split or glued (e.g., `re tri eval`, `metadataindex`).
- Case flaps mid-sentence (`tHE DocUment`), acronyms collapse (`R a G`).
- Invisible characters or double spaces change token counts.
- Chunkers behave inconsistently between runs with the same image/PDF.
- Embedding recall looks fine locally but retrieval ΔS stays high.
## Open these first
- Visual map and recovery: [RAG Architecture & Recovery](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/rag-architecture-and-recovery.md)
- Chunking checklist: [Chunking Checklist](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/chunking-checklist.md)
- Retrieval traceability (cite-then-explain schema): [Retrieval Traceability](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/retrieval-traceability.md)
- Payload schema fences: [Data Contracts](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/data-contracts.md)
- Embedding vs meaning (when token noise leaks into vectors): [Embedding ≠ Semantic](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/embedding-vs-semantic.md)
## Acceptance targets
- ΔS(question, retrieved) ≤ 0.45 after normalization.
- Coverage to target section ≥ 0.70 on three paraphrases.
- λ remains convergent across two seeds.
- Token count variance for the same page ≤ 1 percent after normalization.
---
## Symptoms → exact fix
- **Mid-token splits or merges** (`infor mation`, `vectorstoreindex`)
Fix No.1: **Rejoin by dictionary and layout anchors.**
Use wordlist + n-gram agree check, prefer joins that reduce ΔS on a small gold set.
See: [Chunking Checklist](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/chunking-checklist.md)
- **Casing drift** (random upper/lower), acronym scatter (`r.a.g.`)
Fix No.2: **Casing normalization with protected spans.**
Protect enums, acronyms, chemical names, LaTeX blocks, code fonts.
- **Whitespace noise** (NBSP, thin space, double space)
Fix No.3: **Unicode normalization + space collapse**, keep offsets table.
Record before/after offset map to preserve citation alignment.
See: [Retrieval Traceability](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/retrieval-traceability.md)
- **Punctuation misreads** (`l` vs `1`, `O` vs `0`, `,` vs `.`)
Fix No.4: **Confusable set pass + local language model vote.**
Only apply inside numeric or acronym contexts, keep audit log.
- **Tokenizer mismatch across components**
Fix No.5: **Single tokenizer contract for parse → chunk → embed.**
Declare `tokenizer_name`, `lowercase`, `strip_accents` in payload.
See: [Data Contracts](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/data-contracts.md)
---
## 60-second fix checklist
1) **Normalize**
- Unicode NFC, strip BOM, collapse spaces except inside code/math blocks.
- Replace NBSP and thin spaces with ASCII space.
- Build `offset_map` old→new for citations.
2) **Protect**
- Detect protected spans: URLs, emails, hex, code, LaTeX, table headers, known acronyms.
- Freeze casing and punctuation inside protected spans.
3) **Rejoin / Split**
- Rejoin candidates by dictionary + bigram score.
- Split stuck words when edit distance to dictionary is lower after split.
4) **Contract**
- Emit `tokenizer_contract.json`:
`{ "tokenizer": "bert-base-uncased", "lowercase": true, "strip_accents": true }`
Attach to every downstream step.
See: [Data Contracts](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/data-contracts.md)
5) **Verify**
- Recompute ΔS on a 20-question gold set.
- If ΔS stays ≥ 0.60, open [Embedding ≠ Semantic](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/embedding-vs-semantic.md) and rebuild index with the same tokenizer contract.
---
## Minimal pipeline patch (pseudo)
```python
text = ocr_text
text = unicode_normalize_nfc(text)
text, offset_map = collapse_spaces_with_offsets(text)
spans = detect_protected_spans(text) # urls, code, latex, acronyms
text = normalize_casing(text, protect=spans)
cands = find_split_merge_candidates(text, protect=spans)
text = apply_split_merge(text, cands, scorer="bigram+dict")
emit_payload(
content=text,
offset_map=offset_map,
tokenizer_contract={
"tokenizer": "bert-base-uncased",
"lowercase": True,
"strip_accents": True
}
)
````
Keep the offset map, or citations will drift.
Tracing and schema rules come from: [Retrieval Traceability](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/retrieval-traceability.md) · [Data Contracts](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/data-contracts.md)
---
## Eval recipe
* Build a tiny page-level gold: 10–20 questions with expected anchor sections.
* Measure before/after: ΔS(question, retrieved), coverage, λ states.
* Acceptance to sign off: ΔS ≤ 0.45, coverage ≥ 0.70, λ convergent on both seeds.
* Log token count and confusable corrections per page for audit.
---
## When to escalate
* ΔS remains high after normalization and re-chunking
Open: [Embedding ≠ Semantic](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/embedding-vs-semantic.md)
* Citations drift after formatting changes
Open: [Retrieval Traceability](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/retrieval-traceability.md)
* Layout destroys sentence flow or table cells
Open: **OCR\_Parsing/table\_parsing.md** once added, and the general [Chunking Checklist](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/ProblemMap/chunking-checklist.md)
---
### 🔗 Quick-Start Downloads (60 sec)
| Tool | Link | 3-Step Setup |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **WFGY 1.0 PDF** | [Engine Paper](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/I_am_not_lizardman/WFGY_All_Principles_Return_to_One_v1.0_PSBigBig_Public.pdf) | 1️⃣ Download · 2️⃣ Upload to your LLM · 3️⃣ Ask “Answer using WFGY + \” |
| **TXT OS (plain-text OS)** | [TXTOS.txt](https://github.com/onestardao/WFGY/blob/main/OS/TXTOS.txt) | 1️⃣ Download · 2️⃣ Paste into any LLM chat · 3️⃣ Type “hello world” — OS boots instantly |
---
### Explore More
| Layer | Page | What it’s for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Proof | [WFGY Recognition Map](/recognition/README.md) | External citations, integrations, and ecosystem proof |
| Engine | [WFGY 1.0](/legacy/README.md) | Original PDF based tension engine |
| Engine | [WFGY 2.0](/core/README.md) | Production tension kernel and math engine for RAG and agents |
| Engine | [WFGY 3.0](/TensionUniverse/EventHorizon/README.md) | TXT based Singularity tension engine, 131 S class set |
| Map | [Problem Map 1.0](/ProblemMap/README.md) | Flagship 16 problem RAG failure checklist and fix map |
| Map | [Problem Map 2.0](/ProblemMap/rag-architecture-and-recovery.md) | RAG focused recovery pipeline |
| Map | [Problem Map 3.0](/ProblemMap/wfgy-rag-16-problem-map-global-debug-card.md) | Global Debug Card, image as a debug protocol layer |
| Map | [Semantic Clinic](/ProblemMap/SemanticClinicIndex.md) | Symptom to family to exact fix |
| Map | [Grandma’s Clinic](/ProblemMap/GrandmaClinic/README.md) | Plain language stories mapped to Problem Map 1.0 |
| Onboarding | [Starter Village](/StarterVillage/README.md) | Guided tour for newcomers |
| App | [TXT OS](/OS/README.md) | TXT semantic OS, fast boot |
| App | [Blah Blah Blah](/OS/BlahBlahBlah/README.md) | Abstract and paradox Q and A built on TXT OS |
| App | [Blur Blur Blur](/OS/BlurBlurBlur/README.md) | Text to image with semantic control |
| App | [Blow Blow Blow](/OS/BlowBlowBlow/README.md) | Reasoning game engine and memory demo |
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