Re: [Gretl-users] thousands separator in delimited-text data
On Mon, 2 Feb 2015, Alan G Isaac wrote:
Here is a different perspective. [...]
I totally agree with you, in principle, but I lost this battle long ago
and I have no intention of bringing the whole subject up one more time,
just to re-open old wounds.
And yet, I can understand the reasons of the opposite camp (up to a
point). Yes, fragmentation is evil. Yes, standards are there for a
purpose. Yes, spreadsheets have poisoned the well. And don't get me
started on decimal separators.
We want to make life easier for the average guy; we have to. It's sort of
the whole point of the project. You and I have no problem in converting a
malformed, self-proclaiming CSV file into something decent which we could
feed into our software of choice. We know how to use, if needed, perl,
awk, sed, grep or even, god forbid, a spreadsheet. But there are people
out there who can't, or who'd have to spend an inordinate amount of time
getting the hang of tools they need twice a year. Tell you what: I'm proud
to be part of a project in which this category of users is not snubbed or
frowned upon.
So far, we have been able to strike a delicate balance between the needs
of the less literate while not giving in completely to the most outlandish
requests: take the decimal separator issue, for example. We ended up
reaching a compromise which I don't like very much (national standard on
output, dot on input, plus the option to override national standard if so
desired) which does have some elements of cost, there's no denying that,
but WORKS for nearly everybody. As long as we're, collectively, able to
make pragmatic choices when necessary, I'm perfectly happy to bend the
rules a little for the sake of the whole picture.
This said, folks: USE THE DOT, SEPARATE YOUR FIELDS WITH COMMAS AND DON'T
USE THOUSANDS SEPARATORS! PLEASE!!! ;)
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Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
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