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by vaylian 667 days ago
> even programmers often don't know how to enter raw flow control characters on their systems.

Yes, but that is because those characters are not meant to be entered directly. DSV values should either be created by a dedicated DSV editor or they should be constructed by a software library. You would rather use a paint program to create an image instead of writing the image's bytes in a text editor.
1 comments
lazide 667 days ago
Aka a completely different use case than CSV.
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throw0101d 667 days ago
> Aka a completely different use case than CSV.

How many CSVs are generated, edited, or viewed by Notepad.exe and how many by Excel (or Google Sheets)?

I would posit the vast majority of CSVs are generated through some kind of program where you go to File > Export or File > Save As…. In which case doing selecting a drop down with the option for File Format to be TSV or DSV (with the corresponding file extension) would solve a lot of problems. (Or at least if CSVs from Excel were RFC 4810 compliant by default.)

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lazide 667 days ago
How many get edited or inspected in notepad at some point in their life? Nearly all of them (for any given workflow).
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vaylian 667 days ago
It is nice that text editors are abundantly available and that they can be used for the task. But once the CSV columns get too wide and irregular, then you probably want to reach for a dedicated spreadsheet program, because it is otherwise too hard to figure out which column you are currently reading.

There is still room between a text editor and a full-blown spreadsheet program. New DSV editors could emerge when the DSV format gains popularity.

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lazide 667 days ago
At the point someone is using a different format, they’ll likely pick something explicitly structured. Like everything from JSON, to Yaml, to Protobufs, or hell even XML.

DSV seems like worst of both worlds. Not really structured, AND also not really viewable/editable by lowest common denominator tooling.

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RaftPeople 667 days ago
> when the DSV format gains popularity

CSV is equivalent to Voyager I, the chances of catching up with that kind of head start are extremely low.

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