QualCoder 3.4

QualCoder 3.4

A binary (double-click to run) for Windows is available at the end of the release page for:
QualCoder-3.4.exe md5 checksum: cbdd7585b06f50e93949a942320d2676

On first use of the exe, Windows will ask you to allow to run QualCoder. This is because it is from an unknown publisher. It costs a lot of money to get a trusted publisher certificate - so that will not be possible for the foreseeable future.

A binary (double click to run) is available for Ubuntu 22.04. The md5 checksum is: 926f12b7befc8bb3e868e43820f2cda9

For install from source code, download the zip file below and use the instructions on the main GitHub QualCoder page, or the wiki to install on your operating system.

Changes

Manage files

Added a date entry selector via the right-click menu option. This works on attributes that are character and have 'date' in the attribute name.
Added right-click menu option for reference columns (Ref_Authors, Ref_Title, Ref_Journal, Ref_Type, Ref_Year). This allows copying reference to the clipboard as a Vancouver or APA style reference.

Code text

Press ! to show the current numerical clicked position in the text.

After Edit mode changes - sometimes code positions can be shifted wrongly after the edited section.
Press $ and all codes after the clicked position can be shifted left or right by X characters.
A pop up box will ask how many characters to shift. Negative numbers shift left and positive numbers shift right.
Save a backup of the project before doing this action.

Note - Best practice: whenever you decide to edit the text of a text file with already coded text, it is best to save a backup of the project before editing, in case the coding positions are wrongly repositioned.

Removed the journal view option from the right-hand side hidden pane. This occasionally caused some errors. Additionally, the Manage journal menu opens the journals window as a separate floating window that can be used for writing journal notes when coding, getting reports, paste references or performing other functions within QualCoder.

Code PDF

Direct PDF coding is challenging but QualCoder can now display the pdf pages within QualCoder - with a lot of limitations.

Unlike Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer or plain text documents, Pdfs are very different. They are designed in a print format and not designed to have text extracted. Some Pdfs may present the text as a full page image - so text extraction is not possible without using optical character recognition software. This will not be an option in QualCoder -you would have to do this separately and import the plain text. Where there is text on a Pdf page, the text does not naturally flow from one bunch of words to the next like in a Word document. Instead the text is displayed in text box chucks with x and y coordinates to position each text chunk on the page. Text extraction, like QualCoder using pdfminer, estimates what the next flowing bit of text is, based on these x, y coordinates. This can be correct and be wrong sometimes too.

QualCoder uses pdfminer, so the limitations of pdfminer and re-interpreting pdf display are present. So far, pdf rendering is adequate, to be able to perform text coding.

There are quite a few limitations regarding displaying the graphics - Images and Polygon shapes. Pdfminer does not find all the images on a page and some images appear to be like photo negatives. Often images have a mask to display a portion of the image, or to rotate the image - I cannot work this out yet. Other problems I have come across, is the order of displaying items, particularly, lines, rectangles, curves and images when overlapping. Curves are polygons which require extra instructions to display correctly, so for now they will appear chunky. The text will be displayed using one font - the font size can be changed to overcome overlapping text display issues. Also, each character within a text box can have its own formatting (colour, size, emphasis), so most of this is ignored and formatting is estimated for the entire text chunk.

Large PDF files will take time to load - as QualCoder has to parse the entire set of objects for the PDF before it is displayed. This is noticeable with 10 pages or larger files.

The right-hand side pane displays the plain text for the page.

Controls and options:

Checkboxes at the top will show or hides PDF elements such as lines, rectangles, curves (polygons), images, text. Another check box will display all text in black, in case it blends with background colours.
There is a page selector, or type in the page number and press enter.
There is a text font size adjuster in case the font from the text boxes overlaps too much.
Click on the PDF display and + or - will zoom in and out.

You can export an image of the rendered PDF with coding stripes.

Journals

Can now have journal attributes. Can order by column ascending or descending.
Can Show names like ... or attribute values like ... or select a specific coder name to trim the list of journal rows displayed.

The journal window will now display as a floating window.
This change is so that you can read a coded text, image or audio/video or view reports and at the same time write into the journal entry.

Report codes

When a coding report is run and results are displayed.
You can delete codes by right-click on the code heading and select unmark.
You can add an important mark to a coded segment.

In the code tree area, right-click to select all codes, unselect all codes, and select codes where the name contains matching text.

REFI-QDA Project export

Fixed a None type error. Where memo data was Null instead of empty strings.

Charts

Added a wordcloud charting option, with selection of several background colours. This option is not available in the Windows exe or the Ubuntu executable as it caused an error when creating the exe. You must do a manual install on Windows to get this function.

References

Added right-click menu option to copy reference to the clipboard as a Vancouver or APA style reference.
More columns show in the Manage reference pane.
Options to sort and filter the reference list and the files list.
Sorting is alphabetic not numerical (e.g. journal volumes and issues). As the RIS import is text based some of these fields can contain text and not only numbers. For example, volumes: I, II, II, IV, or issue 1, issue 2 summer.
Alphabetic sorting of numbers is like this:
1
10
101
12
2
21

Translations

I use DeepL for translations. most translations are done. Some on the QtWidgets are not done.

Fixes

• Fixed showing annotations from other text files, when viewing current text file.
• Fixed rare occurrence integrity error. When merging a code into another code and all unique constraints match - e.g. owner, cid, fid, pos0, pos1.
• Fixed coder comparisons report error that failed to make report. (partly fixed, see below).

Errors

• Zero division error in compare coders. Occurs under a specific circumstance - a code has been created but never assigned to data.

• Creating a Case Attribute from the Cases screen. An error occurs. A work around is to create the Attribute from the Manage Attributes screen.

• Wordcloud function does not use coded text within selected category.

Fixes for zero div and case attributes:

• The Windows exe and the Ubuntu executable have been updated to fix these errors. (27 Oct 2023).