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Not sure about the terminology. There are certainly 2 steps, one during pumping, the other afterwards.
During pumping the cothode is heated with the RF coil (didn't think the heater was needed too but I could be wrong) and the carbonate is converted to oxide. I would imagine this is best done before the tube is sealed off because it liberates some gases.
After it's sealed off and cooled down then you draw current from the cathode to increase and stabilise the emission. For the EMI 6/6 that was rebuilt in 1986 I did this for my first and, so far, only time. I had no idea what sort of voltages and currents to use so I erred on the side of caution. The result was that the initial image on the rebuilt CRT was disappointing. After a couple of hours running in the set the picture improved hugely, to the best and brightest that I have ever seen from one of these CRTs.
Cathodes also seem to get "tired" from long periods of non-use. Again a few hours running usually improves things
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