I take your point, but this isn't limited to Whitman. What about Emily Dickinson for example, or of course Joyce? Even the writer on whom I worked in a former life, Richard Crashaw, is better done digitally in many senses because there is no truly authoritative copy text. All his English poems were printed after his exile from England or his death, and there are various different revised versions of the poems in subsequent editions. We know he didn't see any of these through the press and we cannot really be certain he even edited the later ones. So what would be more appropriate than a digital edition where all versions are given equal status? Sadly there isn't one: he wasn't considered important enough for me to get the funding to produce such a digital resource when I tried many years ago (back to that question that Mark raises above, of what gets funded and why...)