On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti wrote: > On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Sven Schreiber wrote: > > > Am 10.06.2010 10:33, schrieb Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti: > >> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Sven Schreiber wrote: > >> > >>> CSV files nowadays aren't even necessarily "comma-separated" and are > >>> surely *not* intended by many users to be portable across countries. > >>> (Even though that might be nice, but it just isn't the case.) > >> > >> Says who? > > > > well for example when you save an OpenOffice Spreadsheet file to > > "text/csv" then the currently set decimal separator (usually from the > > locale) is used. Obviously not portable. > > > > Now you may say that's exactly the problem with Office-like programs, > > and maybe it's because OOo imitates MS Office too much, but that would > > kind of miss the point. The point is that CSV is not standardized enough > > to warrant the assumption that the decimal separator is the dot. Then > > the question is: does gretl want to enforce a non-existent standard > > because we (including me) like that behavior; or does gretl surrender to > > the facts of the csv ecosystem and give users the option to produce > > different variants of csv files. > > > > Ok, I think I made my point, personally I don't really care that much > > (even if it sounded otherwise), so I will stop pushing this. > > I see your point. If a "standard" is only a nominal one, it's no standard > at all, I agree. Maybe it's just me, but if we give in to a > spreadsheet-like convention (which I don't like at all anyway), then we'd > have to support national separators when _importing_ CSV files too, which > would make the code for CSV import even more intricate and forgiving than > it is now (and believe me, it is).
It's even more intricate than you think ;-) We do support variant separators when importing "text/CSV". E.g. semicolon separated columns and decimal commas are not a problem. Allin
