Whether you are "composing" or "decomposing" elements of complex characters, you have to make choices about how the operation is done: which elements will be combined into a composed character (as in the "e acute with dot below" example), or how to order the decomposed elements. When those choices are made according to a codified set of rules (as opposed to your whim of the moment or random selection), that is normalization. The term applies in both directions.