Cumulative Revision Map

Abstract

Unlike static documents, version-controlled documents are edited by one or more authors over a certain period of time. Examples include large scale computer code, papers authored by a team of scientists, and online discussion boards. Such collaborative revision process makes traditional document modeling and visualization techniques inappropriate. In this paper we propose a new visualization technique for version-controlled documents that reveals interesting authoring patterns in papers, computer code and Wikipedia articles. The revealed authoring patterns are useful for the readers, participants in the authoring process, and supervisors.