Editing PDF Table Parsing (section)

=== 5. Cross-Page Continuation Is More Than Repeated Headers ===

When PDF tables span multiple pages, data may be split in various ways. A parser that only handles repeated headers on the next page is usually insufficient for real-world documents.

Common cross-page continuation cases include:

* The first row on the next page contains only the latter part of a field from the previous page.
* Names, categories, descriptive text, or remarks are split across pages.
* The next page starts with multiple repeated header rows before continuing an unfinished record from the previous page.
* Continuation text and a new data-row identifier appear in the same row.
* Empty columns are compressed, causing column positions to shift.
* Table borders, line breaks, or OCR results split what was originally one row into multiple rows.

Therefore, cross-page processing should preserve original column positions and should not remove empty columns too early. When necessary, the parser should use column coordinates, column indexes, identifier patterns, and the previous record state to determine which field a continuation fragment belongs to.

Continuation merging should also depend on the type of text:

* Chinese text fragments can usually be concatenated directly.
* English text fragments usually require an inserted space.
* Multi-value fields, category fields, or remarks may need to preserve line breaks, enumeration marks, or delimiters.
* Numeric fields should avoid accidentally concatenating text fragments.