From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jim Ottaway Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Sociological Data Analysis with Emacs? Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:14:10 +0000 Message-ID: <87k5ymgya5.fsf@lse.ac.uk> References: <20070211225047.GA28680@relwi.unibe.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1171361709 18488 80.91.229.12 (13 Feb 2007 10:15:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:15:09 +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 11:15:03 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 1HGugc-0002cP-TX for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:14:59 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HGugc-0006Xz-Ax for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:14:58 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HGugM-0006W3-Nm for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:14:42 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1HGugL-0006V7-Q2 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:14:42 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HGugL-0006V2-NU for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:14:41 -0500 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2] helo=ciao.gmane.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA:32) (Exim 4.52) id 1HGugL-0005pG-Cr for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:14:41 -0500 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1HGug7-0004nw-8K for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:14:27 +0100 Original-Received: from 53-186.adsl.zetnet.co.uk ([194.247.53.186]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:14:27 +0100 Original-Received: from j.ottaway by 53-186.adsl.zetnet.co.uk with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:14:27 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 39 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 53-186.adsl.zetnet.co.uk User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.91 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:JeVv+uVFQd2nA6amjzSDNSTjdLI= 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:41153 Archived-At: On 11 Feb 2007, sven bretfeld wrote: > Dear Everybody > > I have quite a special question, inspired by the very interesting > recent thread which was inaccurately called "An extremely dumb > curiosity question". > > An editor as powerful as Emacs should have the ability to function as > a QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis) tool. Maybe some of you have worked > with software like Atlas.ti which is only available for Windows (and > very expensive) or GTAMSAnalyzer which runs on GNU/Linux via > GNUStep. You know what I'm talking about. I wrote something for my PhD research that was based on NUD.IST. It does pretty much all that NUD.IST does: construction of hiearchical indexing trees, coding of text units within a document, memos, searches, etc. I found it very useful to have the QDA program integrated into Emacs. Unfortunately QDA, as I named it, has a very clunky user interface, and not very much documentation. Also, I think that some things like hypertext linking between documents and memos could be done better using something like muse. Nevertheless, it worked well enough for me to use it effectively for my thesis. Now I have finished the PhD I am hoping to find some time to make it work better. Especially since some others have expressed interest in an Emacs QDA program [I haven't previously found many sociologists interested in using anything other than NVivo, Atlas.Ti, etc]. If you want to have a look, you can get it at http://www.jeho.org/qda.tar.gz. Regards, -- Jim Ottaway