7.3. QualCoder Development
The qda data folder contains folders for imported documents, images and audio and video. It also contains the sqlite database, named data.qda, to store coding data.
QualCoder creates QualCoder.log and QualCoder_settings.txt files in a .qualcoder folder in your home directory. The settings file contains the name of the current coder, a default working directory and choice of font. The log file records program errors and some user actions.
When AI is enabled: There is an ai_data folder containing a chat history sqlite database and a vectorstore. A vector store is a numerical representation of words, phrases and sentences used by the AI language model. The vectorstore uses faiss which is used for the AI similarity searching.
QualCoder is written in python 3 using the Qt6 for the graphical interface.
Currently QualCoder is developed on Windows 11. Some people have used Qualcoder on Linux Mint, Lubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro/Arch Raspberry Pi, and on MacOS.
Some potential plans for the future are to add functionality:
Look at alternative ways to visualise codes:
- Display code frequency in a comparative way - e.g. compare female versus males for the code frequencies using bar charts or other plots
Look at timeline reporting:
- Maybe add in a way to display coding from documents in a timeline - drawing from a file data attribute that is created by the end user.
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Multi-language support - review of existing translations needed
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Improve REFI-QDA open standard for import and export to other software. Codebook import and export seems OK. Project import and export seems OK but I would still say it is experimental. To review: A/V coded segments, AV sync-points.
The qda data folder contains folders for imported documents, images and audio and video. It also contains the sqlite database, named data.qda, to store coding data. QualCoder creates QualCoder.log and QualCoder_settings.txt files inside a .qualcoder folder in your home directory. The settings file contains the name of the current coder, a default working directory, font, languages and other options. The log file records program errors and some user actions. There may be several rolling log files. A minimum screen resolution of 1024x600 pixels is recommended.
Operating systems used:
QualCoder has been used on Ubuntu 22, Fedora, Linux Mint, Lubuntu, Arch Linux, Manjaro Linux, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10, Windows 11 and MacOS. Testing is currently performed on Windows 11.
Occasionally, QualCoder does not work on some operating systems. For example, most Windows 11 can run the Windows exe that is available on the releases page, but for unknown reasons, sometimes it cannot - on another presumably identical Windows 11.
Sometimes for various Linux distros, different installation instructions may be needed, e.g. Fedora. We do not have the capacity to identify and fix these, and are reliant on end users for feedback or improved instructions to fix these issues.
