Working Group VIDIT

An international working group on textual variation

VIDIT brings together scholars, developers, and designers who study textual variation in literary and historical documents. We work on shared concepts for describing variation and best practices for tools that analyse and visualize differences in texts.

About VIDIT

Featured VIDIT resource

VIDIT Tools Catalogue

Discover a selected collection of software for analysing, comparing, and visualizing textual variation—including current tools, historical projects, and research prototypes.

Browse the catalogue →

Our areas of work

Two connected strands

01

Shared Vocabulary

Building precise, interoperable concepts for describing textual variation across disciplines and traditions.

Explore the vocabulary work → 02

Best Practices

Developing practical recommendations for tools that analyse, compare, and visualize differences in texts.

Explore best practices →

Latest news and updates

  • Upcoming online meeting of the Shared Vocabulary-subgroup: Wednesday September 16, 15:00 CEST. Zoom-link here. Check out the Discord channel to get up-to-date with the subgroup’s work!
  • We presented VIDIT at the ESTS 2026 conference, the DHBenelux 2026 conference, and the TEI 2026 conference. It was really great to talk to conference attendees about our and their work on modeling text variation, learning about the various use cases and the challenges people are confronted with.
  • The organizers of the 2026 ESTS conference kindly offered us a chance to get together during the conference and do some collaborative work. Many people showed up to this Open Session and we had a productive time, working both on the modeling of text variation concepts (“document”, “modification”, “variation”, etc) and testing and reviewing tools for text alignment. Part of our work was fueled by large quantities of American candy, kindly provided by Brett. We plan to take the models of text variation that were sketched during this meeting and use them as point of departure for our modeling work. Keep an eye out on our various communication channels to stay up to date!
  • If you like to know more about either subgroup and what we’re up to, join the dedicated Discord channels (see below) and ask us anything (e.g., the minutes of previous meetings). See below for all the links.

Get in touch!

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