Track Changes: studying digital writing processes

This keystroke logging application was developed within the project Track Changes. Track Changes: Textual scholarship and the challenge of digital literary writing (2018 - Summer 2024) applied new methods, including keystroke logging, to gain insight into the literary writing process of today, which largely takes place on the computer. The aim was to learn what traces the digital work process leaves behind, and how we can use modern techniques to document and analyse the writing process. Twelve Dutch and Flemish authors participated by documenting their writing processes using Inputlog.

Keywords: Keystroke logging; writing studies; translation studies; LibreOffice; cognitive processes

Project team

PI of the project is Karina van Dalen-Oskam (Huygens, KNAW). Dirk van Hulle, Vincent Neijt (both from the Centre for Manuscript Genetics), Mariëlle Leijten and Luuk van Waes (both from Writing and Professional Communication) form the Antwerp part of the team. Within the project, Lamyk Bekius and Floor Buschenhenke were PhD-students.

Lamyk Bekius defended her PhD-thesis Behind the computer screens: The use of keystroke logging for genetic criticism applied to born-digital works of literature on 6th October 2023. Floor Buschenhenke's thesis, Entering stories: decoding born-digital fiction writing through keystroke logging, was published in January 2025. 

Track Changes is financed by the Humanities Free Competition of the NWO. The project is a collaboration between Huygens Instituut and the University of Antwerp.

Keystroke logging

Inputlog can be used to study digital writing. The pre-existing application contains both a keystroke registration tool as well as pre- and post-processing options and a range of analyses. To facilitate easier and more accessible logging, the current variant of Inputlog was developed. It is a Libre Office extension. Its sole purpose is to record the writing process, but its output is readable by its big brother, the stand-alone Inputlog application. The extension itself is downloadable from its LibreOffice extensions library page.

Developers

Inputlog Libre was developed by Resoftlabs: Faruk Diblen, Jisk Attema and Jason Maassen.