Version 2026.07.31 - PDF Inspector Engine, Smart OCR & Academic Research Suite

This major release introduces the PDF Inspector Engine. Phasoric now performs instant text-based vs scanned PDF page classification, layout-aware PDF-to-Markdown conversion with GFM tables and LaTeX math formulas, Web Clipper PDF capture, batch PDF folder importing, and an advanced suite of research tools including DOI/arXiv citation fetching, RAG semantic vector chunking, audio read-aloud TTS, table CSV/JSON exports, and PDF reading progress tracking.

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PDF Inspector & Smart OCR Triage

• Smart OCR Triage Pipeline: Inspects PDF pages in ~20ms. Native text pages bypass Tesseract.js WASM canvas rasterization, speeding up indexing time by ~95% while selectively running OCR only on scanned image pages.
• Layout-Aware PDF Conversion: Converts supported multi-page PDFs into Markdown and reports conversion limitations; detected headings, tables, lists, and reading order are retained when the parser can identify them reliably.
• LaTeX Math Formula Auto-Extraction: Detects mathematical symbol streams in scientific PDFs and formats them into renderable LaTeX blocks ($$ ... $$).
• Chrome Web Clipper PDF Capture: Captures PDF URLs directly from browser tabs and converts them into structured Markdown notes with frontmatter metadata.
• Batch PDF Folder Importer: Import entire folders of PDFs into vault notes via the Migration Wizard.

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Advanced Academic & Research Tools

• Academic Citation & DOI Fetcher: Automatically detects DOIs (10.xxxx/...) and arXiv IDs (arXiv:2401.xxxx) to generate formatted APA and BibTeX reference callouts.
• RAG-Ready Semantic PDF Chunking: Splits extracted PDF text into ~500-token semantic chunks tagged with page numbers and section headings for precise AI Q&A.
• Audio Read-Aloud (TTS) for PDF Previews: Built-in Web Speech text-to-speech reader integrated into PDF preview toolbars ([▶ Read Aloud]).
• PDF Reading Progress & Position Tracker: Automatically persists and restores scroll position and progress (Page N of M - X%) per PDF document.
• Export PDF Tables to CSV & JSON: One-click [Export CSV] and [Export JSON] hover toolbar buttons above rendered PDF tables.
• Bi-Directional Attachment Backlinks ("Citing Notes"): View every note in your vault that references or deep-links to a specific PDF attachment (basalt-attachment://<id>#page=N).
• Multi-PDF Comparative Matrix ("Synthesize Papers"): Generates side-by-side comparative Markdown matrix tables contrasting methodologies, DOIs, and findings across multiple PDF papers.
• Interactive PDF Outline Sidebar & Deep Links: Document outline TOC sidebar with #page=N deep-linking to scroll directly to target sections.
• Vault Tree Quality Badges: Visual [Text] (cyan) and [OCR] (amber) badges on PDF items in the vault file tree.