KCAE.SOURCE:4.2 - Extract the relationships needed for reading

Choose the extractor by the actual carrier. Markdown and HTML can expose headings, lists and links. Born-digital PDFs can still scramble columns or reading order. Scanned documents need OCR and inspection of decisive glyphs, tables and notes. Audio/video transcripts need time offsets and returns to the original segment when tone, a demonstration or a visual relation matters. Machine-readable data needs schema, units, null meaning and provenance. Store the original alongside the extraction while permission permits it.

Define a small extraction qualification set from the source’s likely failures: an exception containing negation, a multi-column page, a repeated heading, a table with merged cells, a footnote and a cross-document reference. Compare rendered source and extraction for the use-changing relationships, not only character count. Random sampling can detect wider drift, but a sample does not certify every uninspected decisive passage. Mark unqualified regions and allow direct visual or specialist reading where needed.

For a table, retain its title, row identity, column identity, units, span relations and notes. An indexed cell can be small, but its read operation expands to these relations. For example, the extracted CedarBench cell “No” is unusable. The qualified reading says “Destination protocol v1 / automatic resend / No; reconcile receipts manually; note a: receiver lacks duplicate suppression.” The source image or native table remains reachable. If OCR cannot distinguish v1 from v2, return an uncertain extraction and inspect the original before applying the condition.

Distinguish faithful extraction from an authored interpretation. A generated explanatory prefix can make an index easier to search; it remains a derived claim, with the original text separately available. Translation has the same discipline: keep source language and edition, preserve important negations, numerical units and scope, and compare the consequential reading with a competent translator or the source owner when reliance requires it. An old translation can be a search aid or historical artifact without being the current operational authority.