NVIVO vs Devonthink

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.