The works described and shown on this site are modern manuscripts written in several, often heavily edited drafts. All the corrections and versions of the work are combined into a single digital entity called a Multi-Version Document. These multi-dimensional works are displayed in a number of ways:

1. As a single view that can be changed to show the different versions of which the work is composed. Clicking on the icon in the bottom left of this display shows the apparatus. Clicking anywhere in the text or scrolling generates the apparatus. Or make a selection and see the variants of that span.
2. As two parallel views that scroll in sync to show what corresponds to what. In this view the user can select any two versions of the MVD to compare. Red text on the left designates text not found in the version on the right, and blue text on the right indicates inserted text not found in the version on the left. Grey text indicates text transposed between the two versions.
3. As a set of descriptions of the versions that comprise the work.
4. As a phylogenetic tree indicating the genetic relationships between the versions. It is generated by the biological Phylip package. "Use branch Lengths" means that the edit distance between versions (how different they are from each other) should be reflected in the length of the branches. If the differences are not very great the tree is not guaranteed to be very legible. The two options "nbody" and "equal daylight" are two alternative ways to draw the tree with branch lengths that try to overcome this difficulty. If all else fails simply unclick the "use branch lengths" option.
5. The "Texts" tab shows the hierarchy of MVDs stored in the DV archive. Double-clicking on an entry or on the OPEN icon opens it. Hitting the UP icon or on the breadcrumb trail takes you back up the hierarchy. Once you get to a single text double click on it to open it in single view. Hit "Compare" to compare the first two versions.

Back to Texts.