The Reconstruction of the Author’s Movement Through the Text, or How to Encode Keystroke Logged Writing Processes in TEI-XML

Abstract

This essay demonstrates how the use of the keystroke logging tool Inputlog allows for a fine-grained analysis of literary writing processes. But before the writing process can be studied, the keystroke logging data needs to be transformed into an output that is suitable for a textual genetic analysis. For this purpose, this essay investigates the potential of combining text with keystroke logging data in TEI-conformant XML. Besides discussing how revisions can be specified in the encoding, the author asks herself how traces of digital writing processes differ from analogue traces (and, taking it one step further, how keystroke logging can be used to record more details about the genesis of a text), what kind of decisions need to be made when encoding keystroke logging data, and how the peculiarities of digital authorship leave their mark on its encoding — as well as on the interpretation and argumentation that underlies the transcription. This will demonstrate that the level of detail that is recorded in keystroke logging data requires us to consider the way in which the text was typed when we design our encoding schemas. The goal of the TEI-XML encoding of the keystroke logging data is to provide transcriptions of writing processes that could be used to analyse (the sequence of) revisions and text production in each logged writing session in relation to their specific location in the text.