From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: sven.bretfeld@gmx.ch Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Sociological Data Analysis with Emacs? Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:31:41 +0100 Message-ID: <20070212233141.GA7429@relwi.unibe.ch> References: <87ejovkqmc.fsf@wivenhoe.staff8.ul.ie> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1171322986 18422 80.91.229.12 (12 Feb 2007 23:29:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:29:46 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Feb 13 00:29:39 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HGkc2-0000Zg-3a for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:29:34 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HGkc1-0004eq-JB for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:29:33 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HGkbp-0004ee-Nm for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:29:21 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HGkbo-0004eK-0R for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:29:21 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HGkbn-0004eH-QE for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:29:19 -0500 Original-Received: from mail-proxy-be-01.sunrise.ch ([194.158.229.48] helo=smtp-auth-be-02.sunrise.ch) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA:32) (Exim 4.52) id 1HGkbm-0006lR-W2 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:29:19 -0500 Original-Received: from kamaloka.dhatu (pop-mu-7-2-dialup-239.freesurf.ch [194.230.170.239]) by smtp-auth-be-02.sunrise.ch (8.13.1/8.13.5) with ESMTP id l1CNT7Ex023436 for ; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:29:09 +0100 Original-Received: from sven by kamaloka.dhatu with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HGke6-0005QG-0i for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:31:42 +0100 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Operating-System: Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 Kernel 2.6.18-3-486 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) X-detected-kernel: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:41146 Archived-At: On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 01:48:24PM -0800, Drew Adams wrote: > > Lisp alone could get you a long way, if you're comfortable with it. > > If all you are doing is applying tags (i.e. an open-ended set of > > categories) to spans of text, you need something that stores > > structures like '(filename start end tag) [for text in FILENAME > > from point START to point END, tag it with TAG]. You could use > > completion functions to enter the tag, to remind you of what you've > > already used. This assumes the source texts are immutable, of > > course, otherwise start and end become unreliable. > > Sorry, I have no idea what this is all about, but your description makes me > think that Icicles tagged regions might help. They are a persistent set of > named start and end locations, together with buffer names (which can be > filenames). And you can use completion with them. > http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Icicles_-_Multiple_Regions. Thanks to all for your suggestions. Regretably I'm not a developer. I'm doing hard to learn how to configure my .emacs file. But I think writing a QDA mode might be a task that could be welcomed by many people. Every university seems to have hundreds of people and teams using QDA methods in humanities and social sciences of different flavours, including medical sociology and psychology. Propriatory software is very expensive and ties users to a specific software solution and its upgrades (I had to buy vm-ware workstation only to use Atlas.ti under GNU/Linux). The only QDA tool running under GNU is GTAMSAnalyzer which is hardly as powerful as, I feel, an Emacs solution could be. Brandon described what has to be done quite well as far as I can tell. And yes, it could be used for many things apart from QDA. I, for example, also use(d) Atlas.ti as a kind of "knowledge storehouse" by making excerpts to every piece of scientific literature I read, coding them with specific labels. This makes up a system of interrelated memos similar to the information storage system that enabled the famous German sociologist Niklas Luhmann to write one thick book per year (he collected information on paper storing them in an "algorhythm" that only he himself understood). I think that might be the large scale literature reviews that you have in mind, Brandon. I will have a look at Icicles tomorrow. Maybe my skills are sufficient to produce a rudimentary solution myself. It would be enough to have the memos of my present project available in Emacs with tagged regions. I will see. Sven