Bug 38088 - Import csv defaults
Summary: Import csv defaults
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
3.4.0 release
Hardware: All All
: low minor
Assignee: Eike Rathke
URL:
Whiteboard: target:3.6.0
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: 38637
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Reported: 2011-06-08 14:57 UTC by ieee8023
Modified: 2012-04-04 12:05 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
current default settings (93.15 KB, image/png)
2011-06-08 14:57 UTC, ieee8023
Details
proposed default settings (90.96 KB, image/png)
2011-06-08 14:58 UTC, ieee8023
Details

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Description ieee8023 2011-06-08 14:57:27 UTC
Created attachment 47738 [details]
current default settings

The first time I used open office I had trouble because I went to open a csv file and it was very confusing.  This confusing was caused by the default selections. 

When opening a csv file the default delimiters are semicolon and space... not comma. 

I think the default delimiter should be a comma for csv files.

Thanks
You guys are awesome
-J
Comment 1 ieee8023 2011-06-08 14:58:14 UTC
Created attachment 47739 [details]
proposed default settings
Comment 2 Rainer Bielefeld Retired 2011-06-08 22:26:52 UTC
The request souds logical because of the file type name COMMA separated values, and also <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180> only mentions comma as separator. But in countries where the decimal separator is a comma people would not be very happy with comma column separator.

I can not confirm reporter's default settings, I see comma + semicolon + blank selected aa delimiters, but that might not be LibO default but remembered from a former csv import. My LibO remembers latest used settings for separators as default for next import, and I believe that is a very good solution. Most users will have to import csv files always from the same source and so with the same delimiters.

Currently I can't see any bug here, if no new information will be contributed, I will close this report.
Comment 3 ieee8023 2011-06-09 04:27:10 UTC
I don't think other countries use a decimal as delimiter. I found this link on an EU site <http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/reference-waterbase-groundwater/reference-waterbase-groundwater-chemical-quality-data/chemicals_groundwater.csv>

When I open a csv file with another well known spreadsheet software it doesn't even give me an import window.  It just opens with comma as a delimiter.  I think defaults should be assumed for a standardized file like csv and the options should be shown if the user selected to import the file.

I believe this is a major issue and more people should weigh in.  When I first used Libre Office I saw this as it was broken and not that it was very accommodating to other countries.
Comment 4 Rainer Bielefeld Retired 2011-06-10 02:58:29 UTC
RC2 is bit by bit identical with release version, so separate items in the version picker are useless. Changes have been discussed with Michael Meeks.
Comment 5 Alexander Balzer 2011-06-24 04:58:16 UTC
Please consider to implement a more general approach like described in
38637 - Better handling for csv-Files
Comment 6 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2011-09-26 03:31:05 UTC
The approach on the bug cited in the previous comment is simply to auto-detect the separator, which is probably possible and definitely the best option.

FWIW, Excel 2007 in French uses ";" as separator, which wouldn't play well with "," as a  default, even if the CSV standard says the contrary.
Comment 7 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 12:25:09 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 8 Eike Rathke 2012-04-04 08:48:31 UTC
(In reply to comment #6)
> The approach on the bug cited in the previous comment is simply to auto-detect
> the separator, which is probably possible and definitely the best option.

Auto-detection is doomed to fail in many situations, consider the
following data:

This is one field; but it continues here, and here, as the field separator is a TAB

However, what we can do is to initially preselect the separators comma,
tab and semicolon, and not space.