import type { ColumnBoundary, Composite, CompositePageStats, DetectedColumn } from './types.js';
/**
 * Stage-1 detector: cluster standard-width text composites by left position
 * and return column boundaries ONLY for a confident multi-column layout.
 * Returns an empty array otherwise (callers then merge without a column
 * constraint). See the module doc for the contract difference vs stage 2.
 */
export declare function detectMergeColumnBoundaries(composites: Composite[], pageStats: CompositePageStats): ColumnBoundary[];
/**
 * Assign a composite to a stage-1 column by left edge, then center, then the
 * closest column. Never returns "no column".
 */
export declare function assignToColumn(composite: Composite, columns: ColumnBoundary[]): number;
/**
 * Stage-2 detector: beam scanning over a horizontal density histogram.
 * ALWAYS accounts for every composite (preservation invariant): the returned
 * columns partition the input, falling back to a single column when the
 * layout is not confidently multi-column.
 */
export declare function detectReadingOrderColumns(composites: Composite[]): DetectedColumn[];
//# sourceMappingURL=columnDetection.d.ts.map