5 Design Rules for Visualizing Text Variant Graphs.

After Schmidt’s article [1] on modelling and representing various versions of text with so called Variant Graphs was published in 2009, web-based tools were developed that utilize and adopt the presented model to facilitate the work with digital editions of text in the browser. CollateX [2] is one of these tools. It computes a static, horizontally aligned, directed acyclic graph with vertices showing the various text fragments and edges labeled with edition identifiers connecting subsequent text fragments. The tool Stemmaweb [3] extends the CollateX graph to allow for user-driven annotation and modification of the graph structure (e.g., merging and splitting of vertices). Despite the attached interaction capabilities, it seems that there is little value put on designing the graphs. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness for improving the readability of Text Variant Graphs. We propose a list of design rules for styling the graph, and its vertices and edges to facilitate a rapid comprehension of the underlying alignment structure by the user.