Freeze a paired locus manifest and verify physical holdout groups datahelp-wantedreproducibility

Prepare the data contract for the line-position pilot. Retrieve IT2a-n.txt and ZL3b-n.txt from the maintainer, store retrieval date and raw SHA-256 after successful downloads, and record alphabet/header/version. If a source blocks access, document that obstacle rather than inventing hashes.

Align common paragraph loci, retain raw strings, flag drawing intrusions, unreadable and alternative glyphs, paragraph starts and uncertain spaces. Produce machine-readable rows with locus, source, physical bifolio ID, inclusion/exclusion reason and both frozen comma policies. Use the institutional collation plus selected images to verify physical groups; never derive a bifolio ID merely from consecutive folio numbering or an undocumented page variable. Target 24 eligible physical groups.

Acceptance: a manifest with an explicit physical-mapping evidence column; 10 manually checked loci spanning at least 3 groups; parser notes and source terms; the exact seed-408 allocation to 16 development and 8 holdout groups published before any holdout statistic is inspected. If fewer verified groups exist, report them and freeze a smaller design first. Do not claim an observed length effect in this task.

Estimated pilot: ordinary laptop, few megabytes of text plus selected image regions; roughly 1-2 hours of human checking, to be measured. See Voynich Evidence Lab task 1 for the motivating protocol.