Classifying and Contextualizing Edits in Variants with Coleto: Three Versions of Andy Weir’s The Martian

This paper introduces Coleto, an automatic collation tool for the comparison of variant texts in English, German, or French, which separates edits from variant texts so that textual changes can be classified and contextualized. Coleto’s proposed methodology for the classification of edits in variants includes: major/minor expansion, major/minor condensation, changes to numbers and whitespace, and common orthographic features. From this classification schema, Coleto generates: an aligned table of edits in the variants, visualizations of the frequency of classified edits, and a visualization of edit density across the progression of the texts. As a sample use case, we present mixed-method analyses of Andy Weir’s science fiction bestseller, The Martian, aided by Coleto’s functions and generated outputs. Code available at: https://github.com/dh-trier/coleto