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If it's literally a table of strings, why on earth would anyone use ODF/OOXML? CSV is perfectly fine for editing in any functioning spreadsheet software, works

If it's literally a table of strings, why on earth would anyone use ODF/OOXML? CSV is perfectly fine for editing in any functioning spreadsheet software, works reasonably well in version control (especially since a given commit won't touch multiple columns). In his case, he's using the XML format which Haxe will parse into compile-time-checked references right in his source code; sounds like a great reason to use this standardized(but Haxe-specific) XML format.

et1337 9y ago
CSV has no formatting. Who wants to resize columns and set up text wrapping every time you open the file. Could save it as .xlsx and then export to CSV, but that's another step and it's not hard to parse simple spreadsheets in XML. Worth it in my book, because it enables fan translators to contribute easily since everyone has Excel.
- douche 9y ago
  Don t use Excel to edit csvs. It makes a hash of things at best, and frigs things up at worst.
  - eropple 9y ago
    It's not about you, though. Or me. It's about what the people working with you are most comfortable with. I can go blurf out JSON or XML or potfiles by hand, whatever. But normal people are going to go "er, no?" and even if you win that argument you've lost social capital on something that didn't really matter.
mikesickler 9y ago
yeah I don't see any reason not to use that XML format. CSV can be problematic because it doesn't declare it's own encoding and doesn't play as nice with translation tools as something with named fields, such as XML or JSON.
eropple 9y ago
> CSV is perfectly fine for editing in any functioning spreadsheet software This smacks of the Linux user who adjusts his pince-nez and talks about "legacy operating systems". Excel is functioning spreadsheet software by near-universal acclaim (to the point where there's a pretty decent argument that everything that isn't 100% Excel compatible isn't, it practically defines the medium when speaking to nontrivial spreadsheet users!), no matter how much you want to well-actually about it. And it's the one that pretty much everyone in this space uses. You might not like that, and I'm not a big fan of it either, but reality is notable for not really caring about whether we like it.
- slavik81 9y ago
  I really don't like how you're putting words in his mouth. He said nothing to suggest that he felt Excel was inadequate for editing CSVs. That's your opinion. And, it's not exactly streamlined, but it's good enough that Microsoft will suggest using it for that purpose. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-or-edit-csv-files-to-import-into-Outlook-4518d70d-8fe9-46ad-94fa-1494247193c7 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-or-edit-csv-...
  - eropple 9y ago
    I misread the author - thought it was someone who'd been posting elsewhere in the thread about Excel (which does have CSV issues for days). Mea maxima culpa.

et1337 9y ago

CSV has no formatting. Who wants to resize columns and set up text wrapping every time you open the file. Could save it as .xlsx and then export to CSV, but that's another step and it's not hard to parse simple spreadsheets in XML. Worth it in my book, because it enables fan translators to contribute easily since everyone has Excel.

douche 9y ago
Don t use Excel to edit csvs. It makes a hash of things at best, and frigs things up at worst.
- eropple 9y ago
  It's not about you, though. Or me. It's about what the people working with you are most comfortable with. I can go blurf out JSON or XML or potfiles by hand, whatever. But normal people are going to go "er, no?" and even if you win that argument you've lost social capital on something that didn't really matter.

mikesickler 9y ago

yeah I don't see any reason not to use that XML format. CSV can be problematic because it doesn't declare it's own encoding and doesn't play as nice with translation tools as something with named fields, such as XML or JSON.

eropple 9y ago

> CSV is perfectly fine for editing in any functioning spreadsheet software This smacks of the Linux user who adjusts his pince-nez and talks about "legacy operating systems". Excel is functioning spreadsheet software by near-universal acclaim (to the point where there's a pretty decent argument that everything that isn't 100% Excel compatible isn't, it practically defines the medium when speaking to nontrivial spreadsheet users!), no matter how much you want to well-actually about it. And it's the one that pretty much everyone in this space uses. You might not like that, and I'm not a big fan of it either, but reality is notable for not really caring about whether we like it.

slavik81 9y ago
I really don't like how you're putting words in his mouth. He said nothing to suggest that he felt Excel was inadequate for editing CSVs. That's your opinion. And, it's not exactly streamlined, but it's good enough that Microsoft will suggest using it for that purpose. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-or-edit-csv-files-to-import-into-Outlook-4518d70d-8fe9-46ad-94fa-1494247193c7 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-or-edit-csv-...
- eropple 9y ago
  I misread the author - thought it was someone who'd been posting elsewhere in the thread about Excel (which does have CSV issues for days). Mea maxima culpa.