>Yes, but what features would you put into such a piece of software?
Right. Or what features to leave out...
Well, one interesting package could be a "coder version". One with no
retrieval feature whatsoever but could be used by students to do some of
the coding at home when they're working on a project in which other people
have the full version. If it's done carefully, it would be a huge
improvement on the level of usability for basic tasks.
Another idea would be a reasonable limit on the number of documents. Kind
of the way the student version of SPSS works.
Automatization and elaborate vizualisation features are probably out for a
simple version.
An important feature would be to be able to generate files compatible with
at least one QDA package.
Optimization can become an important issue in some situations.
And a complete interface is certainly an area that can distinguish a pro
from a limited version.
> the market, the user base, is too small and segmented to
>define "must-have" functions common to all.
You're probably right. However, there are enough similarities between QDA
packages that some patterns seem to emerge.
> potential QDA
>software users only number in the tens of thousands.
Right. It certainly is a very important issue. On the other hand, people
doing intensive sound processing don't number milions but there are very
good free programs to do it.
Also, if it were really accessible, QDA could become somewhat "popular". We
probably all know the advantages QDA can have for fields as different as
medicine, market research, anthropology and literary criticism. In fact,
why should statistical packages have a larger market?
>In the meantime I will go on just dreaming of the small usable piece of
>QDA software I would like to see running on my machine instead of the
>labyrinthine beasts I currently have.
Thanks for sharing this dream! Does it sometimes wake you up too?
BTW, what do you study at UdeM?
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