The style-hidden blind spot needs evidence, not guesswork

Word’s hidden-text problem is more subtle than a checkbox in a CI policy.

A direct w:vanish property on an ordinary run is evidence about that run. A
property on a paragraph mark is a different thing. And a declaration inside a
style can participate in an inherited, toggle-based hierarchy before Word
decides what to show.

That makes two common shortcuts unsafe: calling every style declaration a
hidden run, or ignoring the style part altogether. DocFence 0.2.0
adds a third option—more evidence, with an explicit limit on what the evidence
means.

Three separate signals

The release reports three intentionally separate inventories:

• hidden_text_run_count covers direct w:vanish markup on ordinary runs.
• hidden_paragraph_mark_count covers direct w:vanish and w:specVanish markup under w:pPr/w:rPr.
• The style inventory reports enabled text-run w:vanish declarations in stored styles and whether document-default run properties declare it.

Microsoft describes hidden text as a toggle property when it appears in a
style, while direct formatting sets an absolute state. Its Open XML reference
also defines w:specVanish as a paragraph-mark property; on another run it can
be ignored. That is why the DocFence signals do not collapse into one number.

An honest CI boundary

The style inventory is not an effective-format calculation. DocFence does not
claim which styles are applied, resolve basedOn, table or numbering styles, or
calculate the full toggle hierarchy. It therefore cannot honestly say which
candidate runs Word will display as hidden.

What it can say is useful: the stored package contains style or document-default
declarations worth reviewing. Direct paragraph-mark properties are kept
separate, and tracked historical formatting inside a style does not inflate the
current text-style count.

This turns a blind spot into a review signal without creating a fake rendering
verdict.

Explicit policy gates

The two new candidate-state rules are opt-in:

rules:
  require_no_hidden_text: true
  require_no_hidden_paragraph_marks: true
  require_no_hidden_text_style_declarations: true

They map to DFP006, DFP014, and DFP013. Reports remain privacy-safe:
aggregate counts and fixed categories rather than source text, style names,
style IDs, package paths, or fingerprints.

Release evidence

DocFence 0.2.0 adds regression cases for false values, paragraph-mark
specVanish, style declarations, tracked style history, malformed styles parts,
policy output, and report redaction. It was also smoke-tested against a
conventionally generated Word package with 164 standard styles.

The wheel and source distribution were built twice from the release commit with
the same SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and matched byte-for-byte. The release includes
both artifacts plus a SHA-256 manifest.

The full reasoning, sources, policy scope, and install command are on the
canonical release note.