[data-protocols] Alternative Java Library

Rufus Pollock rufus.pollock at okfn.org
Thu Jun 20 20:06:52 BST 2013


Ah understood and you make a very good point - it's why we have CSV
Dialect Description format spec
http://www.dataprotocols.org/en/latest/csv-dialect.html and that is
part of Simple Data Format.

That said most importers do give you the option of specifying the
separator etc and, unlike JSON, even average non-techhy people can
handle CSV :-)

Rufus

On 20 June 2013 20:04, Xavier Badosa <xbadosa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rufus,
>
> Note that I said "not very" international-friendly. The reason is: CSV is
> not actually a standard, or at least it's a format that comes in many
> (local) flavors. Local CSV-clients tend to acknowledge this and favor the
> local CSV flavor.
>
> The fact has not to do with UTF-8 but with separators: many (most?) mainland
> European countries use the comma as decimal separator, so CSV in those
> countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.) usually don't use the comma
> as the column separator (see this Italian example). There's a good reason to
> use the local convention as the local version of clients like Excel will
> assume the local flavor.
>
> X.
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> On 20 June 2013 19:40, Xavier Badosa <xbadosa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Jeff,
>>>
>>>> in the web service model, it made much more sense from the standpoint of
>>>> performance and simplicity to keep all the data in a single JSON file.
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree with you (besides, I never liked CSV as the format is not very
>>> international-friendly). I'd be interested to
>>
>>
>> Not sure I understand. How is CSV not "international friendly" :-) (is it
>> that utf8 support can be a pain?)
>>
>> Rufus
>
>



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