Encodings and Visualisations of Text Processes across Document Borders

-this essay exemplifies first inroads into interfacing a digitally born genetic edition (instanced by Virginia Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past” [1939–41; unfinished and fragmentary]). A basic requirement for digital genetic editing is to establish the records of text variation within individual documents and to concatenate these records in serial progression to trace and represent the genetic text processes across document borders. Coordinating the mark-up of revisional layering in individual documents within one encoding system establishes a synoptic record of the cross-document progression, stratified commonly into levels correlated to the carrier documents. Guidelines for genetic mark-up have been made available in the TEI P5v2 release. Their hands-on application to our sample material has resulted in some detailed critique and suggestions for modification. From capturing and marking-up the textual progression within each individual document of a series, we proceed to securing the continuity of the comprehensive digital record, and thus the permeability of the document border, by way of automatic collation and mark-up of the genetic text movements in the document interstice. The integrated digital record of a text progression across documents thereby effected carries in its mark-up the requisite information to visualise synoptically structured diachronic (genetic) text data under multiple perspectives. The interface visualisation as such must be realised through (sets of) visualisation software. From the construction-in-progress of one such set of modules, the essay demonstrates the design and describes the operation of one modular interface, a Diachronic Slider.