Choco-Mufin.js

[CHaracter Ocr COordination for MUFI iN texts — JavaScript/browser edition]

A browser-side ESM library and web application for normalizing the use of characters and checking file consistencies in medieval text transcriptions. Mainly targeted at dealing with overly diverse ways to transcribe medieval data (allographic and graphematic) while keeping information such as abbreviations, hence MUFI.

This is the JavaScript port of the Python choco-mufin CLI tool. It runs entirely in the browser — no server, no upload.

Web Application

Open index.html for the Table Editor and convert.html for Check / Convert.

Table Editor (index.html)

• Choose a Unicode normalization form (NFD, NFC, NFKD, NFKC, or none)
• Start a new table from character-range presets, or load an existing CSV
• Discover uncovered characters by dropping ALTO / PAGE XML files
• Edit rules individually: allow, replace, or skip each character
• Export the table as CSV

Check / Convert (convert.html)

• Check: scan XML files against your table and highlight every uncovered character
• Convert & Download: apply all replacement rules and download the converted files as a ZIP preserving the original folder structure

Table of conversion

Syntax

A conversion table must contain at least a char and a replacement column, should contain regex and allow columns (with either true or empty values), and may contain any additional columns.

Column	Effect
char	The character or pattern to match
replacement	What to replace it with (empty = remove)
regex	If true, char and replacement are treated as regular expressions
allow	If true, the character is accepted as-is and replacement is ignored

Any other column is treated as documentation metadata and has no effect on processing.

Example

char,replacement,regex,allow
V,U,,
[a-ik-uw-zA-IK-UW-Z],,true,true
(\S)(\.)(\S),\g<1>\g<2> \g<3>,true,
_,,,true

• Line 1 replaces any V with U
• Line 2 allows any character in the defined range (accepted as-is)
• Line 3 inserts a space around isolated dots using regex back-references
• Line 4 allows _ without replacing it

The #r# prefix on a char value is an alternative way to mark a regex rule (for compatibility with the Python tool).

Library usage (ESM)

import { Translator, Replacement } from './src/index.js';

// Parse a CSV table
const translator = Translator.parse(csvString, 'NFD');

// Translate a line
const out = translator.translate('ẏour text here', 'NFD');

// Find uncovered characters
const unknown = translator.getUnknownChars('ẏour text here', 'NFD');

Development

npm install
npm run dev      # dev server with hot reload
npm test         # run tests with Vitest
npm run build    # build to dist/

Relation to the Python CLI

The Python choco-mufin package provides the same logic as a command-line tool and supports batch processing via shell scripts or GitHub Actions. The JS library is API-compatible: CSV tables produced by either tool can be loaded by the other.

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Logo by Alix Chagué.

The MUFI character data used in related resources is under CC BY-SA 4.0 and comes from https://mufi.info.

Funding

Funded in the context of the ATRIUM RESEARCH project. Funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement n. 101132163. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.