unstructured
f273a7cb - fix: sectioner does not consider separator length (#1858)

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2 years ago
fix: sectioner does not consider separator length (#1858) ### sectioner-does-not-consider-separator-length **Executive Summary.** A primary responsibility of the sectioner is to minimize the number of chunks that need to be split mid-text. It does this by computing text-length of the section being formed and "finishing" the section when adding another element would extend its text beyond the window size. When element-text is consolidated into a chunk, the text of each element is joined, separated by a "blank-line" (`"\n\n"`). The sectioner does not currently consider the added length of separators (2-chars each) and so forms sections that need to be split mid-text when chunked. Chunk-splitting should only be necessary when the text of a single element is longer than the chunking window. **Example** ```python elements: List[Element] = [ Title("Chunking Priorities"), # 19 chars ListItem("Divide text into manageable chunks"), # 34 chars ListItem("Preserve semantic boundaries"), # 28 chars ListItem("Minimize mid-text chunk-splitting"), # 33 chars ] # 114 chars total but 120 chars with separators chunks = chunk_by_title(elements, max_characters=115) ``` Want: ```python [ CompositeElement( "Chunking Priorities" "\n\nDivide text into manageable chunks" "\n\nPreserve semantic boundaries" ), CompositeElement("Minimize mid-text chunk-splitting"), ] ``` Got: ```python [ CompositeElement( "Chunking Priorities" "\n\nDivide text into manageable chunks" "\n\nPreserve semantic boundaries" "\n\nMinimize mid-text chunk-spli"), ) CompositeElement("tting") ``` ### Technical Summary Because the sectioner does not consider separator (`"\n\n"`) length when it computes the space remaining in the section, it over-populates the section and when the chunker concatenates the element text (each separated by the separator) the text exceeds the window length and the chunk must be split mid-text, even though there was an even element boundary it could have been split on. ### Fix Consider separator length in the space-remaining computation. The solution here extracts both the `section.text_length` and `section.space_remaining` computations to a `_TextSectionBuilder` object which removes the need for the sectioner (`_split_elements_by_title_and_table()`) to deal with primitives (List[Element], running text length, separator length, etc.) and allows it to focus on the rules of when to start a new section. This solution may seem like overkill at the moment and indeed it would be except it forms the foundation for adding section-level chunk combination (fix: dissociated title elements) in the next PR. The objects introduced here will gain several additional responsibilities in the next few chunking PRs in the pipeline and will earn their place.
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