https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167321

--- Comment #24 from Dodo Ivanecky <[email protected]> ---
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #23)
> (In reply to Dodo Ivanecky from comment #21)
> > That’s new to me: “It is for CSV.”
> > Why would mouse pasting be limited to CSV-formatted data only? That actually
> > makes it even worse than I initially assumed.
> 
> Well, that may be new for you, and that may be the whole misunderstanding:
> 
> pasting plain text to Calc tries to treat the import as "text - CSV-like -
> input". It may be multi-column, or it may be single-column; there is nothing
> in the plain text data to tell Calc, so it has to guess, and it has to
> provide most flexibility possible - which is using its Text Import, that has
> all kings of settings to handle any of infinite range of CSV-like flavors.
> Note that the data mentioned in your comment 0 is also a flavor of CSV, so
> it perfectly fits the dialog and procedure, with user being in charge of
> reviewing the shown result, and pressing OK only when they are satisfied.

The name CSV stands for Comma-Separated Values, and RFC 4180 indeed defines the
comma (,) as the standard field separator. However, in practice, CSV is not a
strictly enforced format, and many applications (including Excel and
LibreOffice) use different delimiters depending on the locale, very commonly
the semicolon (;).

The reason is exactly the issue discussed here: in many locales, the comma is
used as the decimal separator, which makes using a comma as a field delimiter
impractical. In such cases, using ; is the only reasonable choice.

So while:

formally: CSV = comma (per RFC),

practically: CSV = delimiter-separated values, with the delimiter being
locale-dependent.

This is why a hard-coded assumption like “CSV = comma” is incorrect in an
i18n-aware application.

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