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HELP: is there a software of this description out there??

O

oneworld9

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 10, 2007
5
0
hi all, i am new to the forum, and apologies if this isn't the space for this. I have been searching for almost a year now (renewed search over the last few days), for, what seems to me to be a rather simple piece of software! I am looking for software i can use for journal writing (though it will be used in other contexts). Previously on a windows machine i used ONENOTE, which was basically a word processor with a scheme of tabs and pages to organize notes. It was useful, but now that i have switched to a mac its no longer an option, and wasn't ideally what i was looking for. What i really would like to find is a simple note taker/word processor where i can input notes/journalling and be able to assign categories or codes to segments of my text, and then be able to shortlist those segments. Say, for example, i write various entries in this single document/window, some of which pertain to academic studies, other to personal reflections. I would want to be able to then shortlist or show only those entries or paragraphs i assigned a category or code to, such as "personal".

Every piece of software for qualitative research either doesn't allow additional text input/data entry (useful for a journal thus), or is so over-complicated and over-priced as to render useless for this purpose.

Please, if anyone, can resolve this long-drawn out quest for something so simple that i am sure is out there, i would be incredibly indebted.

thanks,
 
Have you looked at OmniOutliner? Possibly not exactly what you're looking for. You could also try Scrivener, although this might be an overkill. Make sure you do the tutorial if you're checking it out.
 
thanks, but these don't aren't quite it...

i tried both suggestions but neither do what i am looking for. Neither basically allow me to keywoard, categorize or otherwise tags segments of text and then show these segments in a sort of compilation. Imagine picasa or something similar where one can drag and assign tags onto images and then change the view to shortlist to just those tags/categories. this is what i am looking for.

any other suggestions would be most appreciated.
 
oneworld9 said:
i tried both suggestions but neither do what i am looking for. Neither basically allow me to keywoard, categorize or otherwise tags segments of text and then show these segments in a sort of compilation. Imagine picasa or something similar where one can drag and assign tags onto images and then change the view to shortlist to just those tags/categories. this is what i am looking for.

any other suggestions would be most appreciated.
Click to expand...

Scrivener definitely does this - you can assign keywords to different entries, search for the keyword, and then view or export just those bits of text.
 
oneworld9 said:
i tried both suggestions but neither do what i am looking for.
Click to expand...

Um, they both suggest the same program, OmniOutliner...

EDIT: And I think it can do what you want, look
Picture 10.png
 
thanks, but still not sure...

thanks to each of you for your input, i am very grateful (given how long my search as endured!). But i beg to insist that omnioutliner nor scriven are what i need. Again, i want something that can tag/categorize bits (whether paragraphs or a few lines) of my document, and then shortlist to present/report those tagged/coded segments. With Scriven i can only assign keywords to entire sections/documents (hence, for the purpose of a journal this means not having a single document to scroll through, but making new sections for every entry). To be clear, if i am writing in a journal each day, and my notes relate to a number of topics which i wish, at the end of the year, to summarize on those topics, it would ideal to have a single file to write in, rather than 300 separate sections. does this make sense? If i have still missed some aspect of either program do please reply to the post.

what i just don't get though is that what i am looking for should be so obvious and so needed by certain professionals. i would have imagined in the entertainment business there would be some that would want to be able to go through a script for a radio/film and assign categories such as specific locations, and then at the end of the document be able to then shortlist to those sections of the document that related to the tag 'new york' for example...

still searching...
 
almost...

thanks for this last post. this app (mac notepad) is about as close as it gets thus far, but, like scrivener one can only assign categories to entire notes, which would mean that i would have to create separate notes for each journal entry, and thus not be able to read through my journal as a single text/document. what it does do nicely is to shortlist to each selected category of notes. I just wish one could assign categories for segments of text within each note... do you follow?
 
oneworld9 said:
thanks for this last post. this app (mac notepad) is about as close as it gets thus far, but, like scrivener one can only assign categories to entire notes, which would mean that i would have to create separate notes for each journal entry, and thus not be able to read through my journal as a single text/document. what it does do nicely is to shortlist to each selected category of notes. I just wish one could assign categories for segments of text within each note... do you follow?
Click to expand...

The idea with scrivener, as you've noted, is that you assign keywords to documents, not sections. But in the case of a script, for example, the document is a scene, not the whole script.

In your journal example, each entry would be a separate document. To read the whole journal as one document, you just select all the entries. To read a document containing just your musing on a particular topic, you search for the topic or a keyword, select all the results, and view the compiled document.
 
thanks

after further testing it seems that scrivener will probably work for the time being, though if anyone stumbles along a similar programme that works with a single document/text this would also be very much appreciated. Particularly since i actually have written scripts (one is a radio play some 250 pages long), as a single text document and i would love to import it and be able to work with it as a single file but attach keywords to sections/paragraphs within it.

my sincerest thanks to each of you who have helped me resolve this conundrum.
 
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