Don't ask the Germans about auto importing csv files

I’ve been having to import a ton of csv files to Libreoffice. So, I asked their support forums if there’s any means of auto importing the file. It turns out the file type imports without problem for most of the English speaking and Asian world. But, breaks all the time in Germany.

I reawakened a flame war going back 11 years in the Libreoffice community. I think the Germans might invade Poland again over this. Since they always have to write scripts to import csv files they make Americans sit through an import window every time that never changes. Seems like a problem both groups could easily solve with a config file written in YAML that handles all of the common cases, while only turning to the import window when the rare file breaks it.

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“How would some rando at Micro$oft translate this?” has been my least favorite guessing game.

It’s not even Microsoft that caused the problem. It’s IBM when they invented csv files for Fortran in the 70s.

Without looking it up it might have to do with us using commas to separate decimals numbers. Which means we need a semicolon to separate the fields or the format breaks when we use numbers. Which might be the reason why you need to specify things like the separator in the import window or the import might break.

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Oh yeah, it has to do with that, and devs being stubborn about not allocating resources towards solving UX issues.

It’s an opensource project, right? Did you try to contribute? Can’t expect your issue to get fixed if they don’t have the manpower to pursue this.

Edited to not attack.

They’re the ones bitching and moaning about Americans. A bunch of Germans are pissed off about losing the war, and having Americans tell them what to do. That’s why they have to deal with our file standards. I just think it’s funny there’s a small group of Germans trying to make the program worse to get back at us. For some reason whenever someone mentions the issue this small group insists it should not be fixed. I don’t think they’re even developers on Libreoffice.

Features that fix the problem are in the newest release. I’m just stuck on an old version since there’s instability in the newest release for me.

obraz

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They literally exist.

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74580#c26

I am interested in another part of that bug-discussion: did anyone thought about not having to open cvs files manually?

Of course I do not know your use case, but I could imagine that users will be more happy to not open them at all or have a fitting tool to do what they need to do, while data flows as automagically as it could :slight_smile:
(I am only guessing, that the data could be saved in another format, or could directly given to the next (software) consumer.
cheers,
nx

I need to open to modify a column, and then save back to a csv. The third party I’m downloading my data from and importing it into another third party won’t change their workflow so I don’t have to modify incompatibilities.

I was just curious why they can’t do it automatically since Vim can handle it fine. After a few days of replies I was informed there’s an undocumented bug fix in the next version that adds the feature I wanted.