VALIDATION ASSISTED DOCUMENT CONVERSION DESIGN

Systems and methods are described that facilitate validating electronic document conversion chain design in real time, as a designer edits a conversion chain that converts a document collection between formats. Waypoints are inserted into the document conversion chain by associating validation specifications with selected conversion components in the chain. AS the conversion chain is executed on a document collection, the validation specification is executed on all documents in the collection when a selected conversion component is executed. Validation results are returned to indicate to the designer which documents were successfully converted by the component and which were not. The designer can then modify the conversion chain, which is re-executed, and validation results are again presented to the designer for comparison to the pre-modification validation results. The designer can then approve or reject the modification(s) depending on whether document validation is improved thereby.