In document automation, generating the content is only half the battle. Once the engine has replaced placeholders and repeated rows, the resulting document often contains technical artifacts: processor comments that should be gone, orphaned footnotes, or empty paragraphs left behind by conditional logic.

If we want documents that look authored by humans, we need a formal Post-processing phase. This phase decouples the transformation logic (stamping) from the hygiene logic (cleaning up).

As a solo maintainer, I’ve found that a clear pipeline lets me help more people in less time. If a team shares a minimal .docx that reproduces a glitch, I can run pre → core → post and see which stage failed the contract. Because the stages are small and intention-revealing, fixes are localized, and improvements benefit everyone.

Technique Taxonomy: Types of Post-processors

Not all cleanup is created equal. We can categorize post-processing tasks into three main groups:

  1. Artifact Removal: Deleting technical metadata like the comments used as directives.
  2. Structural Hygiene: Pruning orphaned elements (e.g., footnotes whose references were deleted) and collapsing empty containers.
  3. Presentation Polish: Normalizing styles, merging adjacent runs with identical formatting, and ensuring consistent whitespace.

Worked Example: The Post-processing Hook

In Office-stamper, we’ve introduced a configurable pipeline. You can now register a list of post-processors that run sequentially after the core engine has finished its work.

var config = OfficeStamperConfigurations.standard();
config.addPostprocessor(Postprocessors.removeOrphanedFootnotes());
config.addPostprocessor(Postprocessors.removeOrphanedEndnotes());
config.addPostprocessor(new CollapseEmptyParagraphs());

A concrete post-processor is a simple, focused unit. For example, removing orphaned footnotes ensures that the document’s references remain valid even if the text that pointed to them was removed by a displayIf directive.

Pitfalls to Watch Out For

  • Hiding Defects: A post-processor might “fix” a symptom of a bug in your core logic. Always use metrics or TRACE logging to track what is being removed.
  • Performance: Document traversal can be expensive. Prefer bounded scopes and streaming over full-document scans where possible.
  • Ordering Sensitivity: Removing a comment might leave a paragraph empty; if the paragraph-collapser runs before the comment-remover, you’ll end up with an empty paragraph. Define and document a canonical order.

Checklist for Document Hygiene

  1. Keep it Pure: Post-processors should be idempotent; running them twice should produce the same result.
  2. Single Purpose: One class, one cleanup task. Don’t build a “fix everything” monster.
  3. Document Dependencies: If Post-processor B depends on Post-processor A’s output, make it explicit in the configuration.
  4. Test the Edge Cases: Ensure that cleanup doesn’t accidentally remove valid user content (e.g., actual user comments vs. processor comments).