# The editorial ledger
What may change in the scripture text and what never does: the decoding rules, the four reviewed editorial rules and their eleven applications, the enforcing gate, and how a concern travels.
- Page:
- Updated: 2026-09-27
- Verified against: `fe1ff7d` on 2026-09-25
- From the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji — Knowledge Base wiki. Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji is quoted verbatim, cited by Ang, and never altered.
---
The Gurmukhi in the corpus is verbatim from the source Bir. The pipeline transforms the PDF's
*glyph stream* into *logical Unicode* — and that is all it does. Every transform it applies is an
entry in one register, `audit/editorial-ledger.jsonl` in sggs-data, and a CI gate there fails any
scripture change or any new rule that has no entry. This page explains the register; the register
itself is the [canonical file](https://github.com/Algorythmos-AI/sggs-data/blob/main/audit/editorial-ledger.jsonl).
> **Explanation, not scripture.** This page describes rules by their codepoint classes and never
> reproduces a verse. When you need the text, read it verbatim with its Ang from the
> [Ang explorer](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/data/line-record/#explore-real-records) or the website.
## Two kinds of transform, one register
| Class | What it is | Entries | Where in code |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Decoding** (D0–D6) | Undoing what the PDF font did to the byte order: print-job timestamps stripped; a consonant and its halant swapped back into logical order; font glyphs restored to the signs they printed (kanna with bindi, subjoined haha and vava, bindi, hora); `ੴ` restored from its two-glyph form; a vowel sign re-attached where a stray space split it (the archaic `ਓੁ` spellings, 12 cases); the sihari moved after its consonant cluster; stray private-use and Latin characters stripped and the text NFC-normalised | 7 rules | `fix_text` steps 0, 1, 2, 2b, 3, 5 |
| **Editorial** (R1–R4) | Repairing an *impossible* Unicode sequence the font emitted — a doubled sihari, a halant before the consonant it belongs to, a detached sihari with a dotted circle, Sahaskriti clusters with a leading sihari — restored to the canonical reading | 4 rules, **11 applications** | `fix_text` step 4 |
| **Flags** (F1–F2) | Things the pipeline *notices but does not change*: an orphan sihari with no following consonant (11 occurrences), and the rare Sahaskriti ligature glyph decoded to kanna (4, logged for review) | 2 flags | logged, never transformed |
The eleven applications, one per affected line:
| Entry | Rule | Ang | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| E001 · E002 | R1 | 573 · 586 | documented from the start |
| E003 | R3 | 727 | documented from the start |
| E004 | R2 | 1354 | approved 2026-09-24 (scholar review) |
| E005 · E006 | R4 | 1358 · 1387 | approved 2026-09-24 (scholar review) |
| E007 – E011 | R1 | 1398 · 1402 · 1406 · 1408 · 1409 | approved 2026-09-24 (scholar review) |
The three earliest applications were itemised when the pipeline was written; the other eight were
applied by the same rules and itemised on 2026-09-23, then reviewed and approved by a scholar on
2026-09-24. **If a page or a comment still says "3 logged corrections", it is out of date:** the
register is 4 rules and 11 applications.
## The gate
`ledger_check.py` runs on every pull request in sggs-data, and fails it unless all three hold:
```python
"""Enforce the editorial ledger: scripture text changes only through a registered, reviewed entry.
python3 pipeline/ledger_check.py [--base GIT_REF]
Checks (exit 1 on any failure):
1. audit/editorial-ledger.jsonl is well-formed: one header, unique ids, every
application names a registered editorial rule, and the evidence PDF hash equals
validation/reconcile-attestation.json.
2. Code == register: the editorial rules in pipeline/sggs_pipeline.py:fix_text
(step 4: literal replacements + the Sahaskriti regex) are exactly the ledger's
editorial rules — adding, changing or removing one in code without the ledger
(or vice versa) fails.
3. With --base: every line whose T0 fields (ang, gurmukhi, text, markers) differ
between corpus/sggs.jsonl at GIT_REF and now must be a candidate line of an
application entry added since GIT_REF; lines may never be added or removed.
Stdlib only; Python 3.9+. Reads the corpus from git for the base, never writes.
"""
```
*`sggs-data/pipeline/ledger_check.py`, lines 2–19, read at `c36e317`: *
Source: [`pipeline/ledger_check.py`](https://github.com/Algorythmos-AI/sggs-data/blob/main/pipeline/ledger_check.py) in sggs-data.
So a rule cannot be added to the code without the register, a register entry cannot claim a rule
the code does not have, and a line's text (`ang`, `gurmukhi`, `text`, `markers` — the "T0" fields)
cannot change between two commits unless a new application entry names that line.
## How a fidelity concern travels
```mermaid
flowchart TB
accTitle: A reported text concern goes through review and the ledger before any dataset changes
accDescr: A reader or Granthi reports a concern as a scripture-fidelity issue with the Ang, the line and a photo of the printed page. A person compares it with the source edition. An edition difference, a saroop rendering or a transliteration question gets an explanation and no change. A confirmed impossible sequence becomes a ledger entry and rule, reviewed by a scholar, then an sggs-data rebuild with its gates and a new DATASET_VERSION, a lock bump in the platform and the same pin in the app.
r[A reader or Granthi reports a concern] --> i[An issue: Ang, line, photo of the page]
i --> c{A person compares it
with the source edition}
c -->|an edition difference,
saroop, transliteration| n[No change: an explanation]
c -->|an impossible sequence,
confirmed| l[A ledger entry and rule,
scholar review]
l --> b[sggs-data: rebuild, gates,
a new DATASET_VERSION]
b --> p[Platform: the lock bump]
p --> a[App: the same pin, re-archived]
```
Most reports are an edition difference, the traditional-saroop rendering (a display choice, the
stored text is verbatim) or transliteration (a reading aid, not scripture). Only a confirmed,
reviewed repair is ever registered, and it reaches the site and the app as a new dataset — never
as an edit here. The support side of this flow is in the
[support inbox runbook](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/process/runbooks/support-inbox/); the reverence rules for engineers
are in the [reverence checklist](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/onboarding/reverence-checklist/).
## Still under review
Known items that are *source-faithful* and deliberately unchanged, tracked row by row so they can
never be silently altered (sggs-data's `audit/data-quality-baseline.json`):
- 21 lines with a vowel sign that has no base consonant (Angs 214, 342, 695, 698, 699, 897, 1203,
1205) — flagged for scholarly review;
- the three closing rubrics that stay one-line compositions (`TRAILING_RUBRICS`);
- roughly twenty verses the source typography sets like headings;
- one line with an empty `translit_norm` (id 35328, Ang 829), which a rebuild corrects.
None of these is a text edit; each is a review question, and the answer arrives as a ledger entry
or as "leave it as printed".