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+# QualCoder Installation and running instructions
+
+## INSTALLATION 
+
+For the manual installations (using the command line or terminal) I mention a specific release version, for example version 3.6. Please check on the [releases page](https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/releases) for the most current version, as it may be newer. 
+
+### Prerequisites
+VLC is optional, but you will need it installed if you need to do any audio/video coding. Optionally, install ffmpeg for speech to text and waveform display, see https://phoenixnap.com/kb/ffmpeg-windows..
+
+### Windows
+
+See [https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/releases/3.7](https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/releases/3.7)
+
+You have two options for executables, created on Windows 11, and may work on Windows 10:
+
+- There is a Windows installer on the release page called: **QualCoder.Win.3.7.exe**
+
+- There is a standalone, non-installable exe folder called: **QualCoder.Win.3.7.Portable.zip** Download and unzip. It is in a folder alongside an internal folder. These both must be together or the exe will not run. Double-click the QualCoder exe to run, it takes up to 20 seconds to start. 
+
+Standalone, portable version: <img width="100" height="60" alt="QualCoder portable" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6be1de98-8b47-4d57-b4b5-c34375e44959" />
+
+On first use of the exe, Windows may ask you to allow to run QualCoder. This is because it is from an unknown publisher. It costs a lot of money to get a trusted publisher certificate - so that will not be possible for the foreseeable future. If you are uncomfortable with these warnings install from the source as detailed next.
+
+Alternatively, install from source code:
+
+Download the source code. Read and apply the section for Windows source code usage in the **Readme.md** file.
+Remove the back ticks that surround the command line instructions ` as these are used for display only.
+
+### MacOS
+
+**Install from App bundles:**
+
+Make sure you have installed any MAC OS updates before starting the installation. Go to the System Settings app on your Mac. Click General in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down), then click Software Update.
+
+Install QualCoder:  Double-click the downloaded dmg-file. Drag QualCoder into the link to your applications.
+
+Start QualCoder from your Launchpad or by double-clicking the app within your applications folder.
+We are currently not able to sign the app bundles, so when you first try to run the program, you may get a pop-up warning that QualCoder is from an unregistered developer or "QualCoder can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software." Depending on your processor, you may see one of these:
+
+If you see "Show in Finder" or OK.  Click Ok.
+
+If you see "Done" or "Move to trash. Click "Done.
+
+Next, go to Settings and select Privacy and Security.  Scroll down until you see a message stating QualCoder was prevented from starting. Click on "open anyway". You may be prompted to enter your password and may need to click "Open" again.  After entering your password, just wait for the program to open up. It may take several seconds.
+
+From now on, QualCoder should start without issues.
+
+**Install from source code:**
+
+Download the source code. Read and apply the section for masOC source code usage in the **Readme.md** file.
+Remove the back ticks that surround the command line instructions ` as these are used for display only.
+
+
+### Debian/Ubuntu Linux
+
+There is an executable file in the releases page for Ubuntu 24.04 for the 3.6 release. Download and double click to run.
+
+Alternatively, run QualCoder from the source code:
+
+Download the source code. Read and apply the section for Ubuntu source code usage in the **Readme.md** file.
+Remove the back ticks that surround the command line instructions ` as these are used for display only.
+
+### Fedora 43
+
+These instructions are tested with QualCoder 3.7 on Fedora 43 with Python 3.12.12.
+
+Install dependencies:
+
+`sudo dnf install python3.12`
+
+Set up QualCoder:
+
+`cd ~/qualcoder  # replace with appropriate location on your machine`
+
+`python3.12 -m venv env`
+
+`source env/bin/activate`
+
+`python3.12 -m ensurepip`
+
+`python3.12 -m pip install --upgrade pip`
+
+`mkdir tmp`
+
+`TMPDIR=./tmp python3.12 -m pip install -r requirements.txt`
+
+`deactivate`
+
+Usage:
+
+`cd ~/qualcoder  # replace with appropriate location on your machine`
+
+`source env/bin/activate`
+
+`cd src`
+
+`python3.12 -m qualcoder`
+
+### Fedora 42 
+
+These instructions download the current source code directly from GitHub. Note: Fedora uses Wayland which may not work well with the Qt graphical interface. It is suggested you also install Xwayland.
+
+Download the source code. Read and apply the section for Fedora source code usage in the **Readme.md** file.
+Remove the back ticks that surround the command line instructions ` as these are used for display only.
+
+There may be problems with QualCoder working with audio / video in Fedora.
+
+### Arch/Manjaro Linux
+
+Download the source code. Read and apply the section for Arch source code usage in the **Readme.md** file.
+Remove the back ticks that surround the command line instructions ` as these are used for display only.
+
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+
+# Settings
+
+The settings dialog allows you to change several features including language, coder name and font type and font size, as well as options for the AI integration. 
+
+Multiple coders can code the same text. A new coder name can be entered in the text box. You can choose an existing coder from the drop down box. The coder name is 'default' when first using QualCoder. When opening another existing project, please make sure the coder name is set to the name you want to use by checking and updating the Settings before you do work on your project. Please note that only the current coder name is specially stored. If you enter a series of coder names in settings, new coder names are not stored, unless they are actively used, i.e. by importing a file, creating a code, coding text etc.
+
+The default language of QualCoder is English. Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish, Swedish are alternative languages. Some languages have not been thoroughly reviewed for accuracy of translations. When changing a language, you need to close then reopen QualCoder for the change to occur.
+
+Checking the Show IDs box displays the numeric IDs for codes files cases and more. These IDs may be useful when writing sql queries.
+
+There area few options to change the overall look of QualCoder.
+
+For transcribing audio and video, the time format and bracket type can be selected.
+
+Very large text files can slow the coding mode in QualCoder. So a right-click option in Code Text is to load smaller sized chunks of the text. 50,000 characters is the default size, but this can be changed in Settings to smaller sizes for slower computers.
+
+![image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/eac5c810-1ac6-4c76-b73f-5e3096380a55)
+
+### Backups
+
+Project backup can be set to automatically backup every hour, or no backup. QualCoder keeping the most recent backups with a date and hour time stamp. The backup name is: _projectname_BKP_yyyymmdd_hh.qda_  Where _hh_ is 24 hour time. This also means multiple backups are not done within an hour. So a new backup cannot overwrite another backup created within the same hour. A limited number of backups are kept, **older backups are deleted**. Setting option allows you to choose from 1 to 10 backups.
+
+I recommend that you make a backup before doing any substantial changes, such as reorganising codes and categories, merging projects, or merging codes. QualCoder does perform hourly backups (keeping up to the most recent five) if backups are set in the settings.
+
+Rename or move to another location particular backups that you need to keep. When the backups are set, an additional option is to choose to backup the audio/video files. For completeness of backups it is recommended to back up audio and video, however this may slow down opening of the software if you have many large files. Alternatively you can link to large audio/video files rather than import them into the project folder. The default project directory is where many file operations will default to, for export or looking to import files.
+
+In your home folder QualCoder will create a .qualcoder folder with a QualCoder.log file for logging events and a config.ini file which will contain a lot of settings such as the current coder’s name, preferred fonts, language and a preferred working directory. Do not sure any data or project inside the .qualcoder folder. The only file that you should put in here is a stopwords.txt file, only if you need to apply a different set of stopwords for word cloud and word count functions. This folder is only for the QualCoder software to use as it is running.
+
+## Advanced options and logging
+
+The **AI related options** at the bottom of the Settings dialog are described here: [AI Setup](https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/wiki/2.3.-AI-Setup)
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