23. The apparatus of claim 22 , wherein the function further comprises: the LD trellis step error associated with the last step in the LD critical path; and the LD/OCR-Key trellis step error associated with the last step in the LD/OCR-Key critical path.
23. The apparatus of claim 22 , wherein the function further comprises: the LD trellis step error associated with the last step in the LD critical path; and the LD/OCR-Key trellis step error associated with the last step in the LD/OCR-Key critical path. 24. The apparatus of claim 23 , wherein the function is applied to the second set of candidate words.