Re: [Gretl-users] Export data & Decimal point
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).
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Economia
Università Politecnica delle Marche
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti