Contributing
Contributions to qcoder whether in the form of bug fixes, issue reports, new code or documentation improvement are welcome. Please use the GitHub issue tracker. For any pull request please link to or open a corresponding issue in the issue tracker. Please ensure that you have notifications turned on and respond to questions, comments or needed changes promptly.
In making contributions and suggestions please keep in mind the general approach and road map outlined below as well as the motivation for qcoder. The intent of this project is not to replace a full featured proprietary QDA application. In our view, the advantage of open source is that, instead, qcoder can offer the distinctive features of qualitative coding while providing ways to interact with other R packages that implement specific analytical techniques. In deciding whether to implement specific features we will always first ask whether it would be possible to interact with (or possibly help to build) a separate R package. Our main focus is on coding and providing ways to interact with other packages, not analysis.
Our approach is currently highly focused on ease of use for people who have not used R previously and who have possibly not used QDA software at all. Therefore we have made the decision to first focus on a simple, tightly structured project model that does not require the installation of Java or of a data base.
Once we have a satisfactory interface there are a number of extensions that we will make that will allow more flexibility and power and hence support larger and more complex projects and users with more experience. These will include more flexibility on the location of files (including the ability to use text accessible on the Web) and storage in a data base. Therefore, all code contributions should be made with this future in mind. Functions should work from the command line, which also ensures that they can be efficiently tested. We welcome interested people, both users and developers, to discuss these plans in our issue tracker and help make them happen.
If you would like to make a code or documentation contribution, please open an issue in the tracker that you link to a pull request.