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NVIVO vs Devonthink
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 7, 2017 at 08:32 AM
I respect DEVONthink, and use it to hold my reference databases, but the real attraction is the powerful search function, complete with hit highlighting and buttons for jumping from hit to hit. I don’t use any of the other features, because as others have already remarked, there are much better options available for fast, efficient synching.
But for searching rapidly through very large numbers of documents, DEVONthink is optimal.
Having said that, dtSearch is even more optimal, despite its now rather old-fashioned “look”.
Finding really good search engines is a major challenge nowadays. I’m always on the lookout for apps with drill-down search functions, but the number seems if anything to be shrinking.
Posted by Dellu
Jul 7, 2017 at 11:45 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
I respect DEVONthink, and use it to hold my reference databases, but the
>real attraction is the powerful search function, complete with hit
>highlighting and buttons for jumping from hit to hit. I don’t use any of
>the other features, because as others have already remarked, there are
>much better options available for fast, efficient synching.
>
>But for searching rapidly through very large numbers of documents,
>DEVONthink is optimal.
>
>Having said that, dtSearch is even more optimal, despite its now rather
>old-fashioned “look”.
>
>Finding really good search engines is a major challenge nowadays. I’m
>always on the lookout for apps with drill-down search functions, but the
>number seems if anything to be shrinking.
yes, dtSEarch is powerful engine. I have used it for a while. But, I find the proximity search in Devonthink not so satisfactory. It gets fooled by repeated same term.
‘active’ NEAR/5 ‘passive’ in Devonthink finds phrases like ‘’ active, active’‘. It might be a bug. But, I find that annoying.
But, for me, for searching, I find Foxtrot Pro the best in its class. the proximity searches, the previews; the searching within searches…I find it to be the most complete searching software.
I am now playing with Atlas Ti and MaxQDA. Digging a bit, these two applications are much better than NVIVO for coding. The reason why I am looking into this genre is because of the coding (tagging the paragraph; or the bullet point; or the just the sentence). No other appliation can do that: not even Tinderbox. Both TB and Devonthink tag files. They cannot tag paragraphs. Onenote in Windows can link paragraphs to paragraphs (as well as tagging). Onenote of the mac cannot do that. That is why I am looking into this class of softwares.
Posted by Prion
Jul 8, 2017 at 09:19 AM
Dellu wrote:
>The reason why I am
>looking into this genre is because of the coding (tagging the paragraph;
>or the bullet point; or the just the sentence). No other appliation can
>do that: not even Tinderbox. Both TB and Devonthink tag files. They
>cannot tag paragraphs.
Curio can tag just about anything, if you need a solution for the Mac.
If you are a Tinderbox user you might want to “explode” your text by paragraph, i.e. split a single note into a set of notes divided by a recognisable character
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 8, 2017 at 10:01 AM
Curio can tag whole “figures” (text boxes, images, shapes)—but not bits of figures—words in text, etc. QDA apps specialize in tagging the bits—a level of detail not common outside dedicated QDA solutions.
@Prion wrote
>Curio can tag just about anything, if you need a solution for the Mac
Posted by Dellu
Jul 9, 2017 at 01:36 AM
Thank you Paul. That is right. QDA can do more details: and the concept map of the tags. But, most important to me is not the concept map of the tags themselves: rather the concept map of the quotations.
look at this video to see how the concept mapping of quotations alongside the tags work in Atlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Z84L_J8sk
But, I am really in conflict right now. Atlas Ti is very attractive for the concept mapping. But, Maxqda is much more efficient in many other areas.