From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andrew Stribblehill Subject: Re: Org-mode as QDA-Software? Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:20:50 +0000 Message-ID: <1f38ae890912181620n58251800j97f094ef2869a80@mail.gmail.com> References: <87tyvnsv9j.fsf@gmx.ch> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1NLn46-0005vo-HH for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:20:58 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1NLn42-0005uh-0T for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:20:58 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=47567 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NLn41-0005uX-Oy for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:20:53 -0500 Received: from mail-fx0-f225.google.com ([209.85.220.225]:63614) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NLn42-0001lm-3q for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:20:54 -0500 Received: by fxm25 with SMTP id 25so2720189fxm.26 for ; Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:20:52 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <87tyvnsv9j.fsf@gmx.ch> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Sven Bretfeld Cc: emacs-org 2009/12/18 Sven Bretfeld : > Hi all, especially you org developers out there > > Org mode would be a nice base for bringing a good QDA-Software to the > world of free software, isn't it? QDAS is a special type of software for > qualitative data analysis[=B9], mostly used in Sociology and related > fields of Science. Existing programs like Atlas.ti[=B2] and MaxQDA[=B3] a= re > what I deem the essence of proprietary stuff: very expensive, elitist > and utterly unfree (but widely used by research groups who have enough > money at their disposal). > > AFAIK, there is only one piece of QDA software available for Linux, > gTAMS Analyzer, which is quite awkward in my opinion. > > I often advocate QDAS to students and PhD students for managing > Discourse Analysis projects, and its always embarrassing to push them to > expensive programs. But I think org-mode is just one step away from > being a powerful QDAS, especially with org-babel, I think. This lack in > the world of free software might be only a small addon-package away. It > would be the first cross-platform solution, and group functionalities > could be implemented via git, CVS or SVN. To my regret, I'm just a > devoted user, in no way a developer. > > Is any developer out there who deems this a worthwhile project? Students > all over the world would be grateful (if we manage to make it known via > Google and Wikipedia). > > Greetings > > Sven > > [=B9] =A0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitative_research. > [=B2] =A0http://www.atlasti.com/en/. > [=B3] =A0http://www.maxqda.com/. Without a clearer understanding of what features you want, I don't think anyone's going to be able to answer you to your or their satisfaction. >From skimming the first section of http://www.maxqda.com/products/functionstab (Data management) it looks like orgmode already supports most of these requirements. The latter two, related to weighting paragraphs of text (presumably to mark up relevance?) are not trivially supported unless you wanted to make them subsections and assign them Properties. I've never used this software but the list of features seems very much a grab-bag of stuff all glommed together into one big product with little attention paid to the core requirements: maybe some clear thinking about what the fundamentals of qualitative data analysis tools are will prove useful.