Media Type "text/csv": new draft (-02) and Last Call

[Yakov Shafranovich]

Graham Klyne wrote:
> At 01:14 23/03/05 -0500, Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
> 
>> Clyde,
>>
>> Thanks for pointing this out. I personally think that instead of 
>> making the header record mandatory which is something that most CSV 
>> applications do not have, I would rather take the comma out of the end 
>> of the record and have the last field end with a CRLF instead of an 
>> optional COMMA. Do you think that is a plausible solution?
> 
> 
> No.  Some of the Excel data I process has trailing commas.  This must be 
> allowed.
> 

The main intent of the document is focusing on the MIME type. The CSV 
common definition is an attempt at a single tight definition of the CSV 
format to go along with the MIME type. I don't think that every 
application is compliant with it but the interoperability considerations 
section does mention that implementors should be aware of divergent 
implementations.

> I also don't think it's necessary to say anything (other than maybe as a 
> comment) about any special status for the first line:  such use is 
> accommodated quite reasonably within the basic CSV format.
> 
> For example, having such a line when exporting Excel as CSV depends 
> entirely upon how the user constructs the original spreadsheet.  Column 
> headings are common, but not mandatory.  In some cases, there may be a 
> more complex heading structure -- this is an application issue, not a 
> dataset format issue, and as such does not belong in the dataset format 
> specification.
> 

Hmm... I do think that probably every single spreadsheet program I have 
seen uses the optional header format so it is pretty common. Since I am 
trying to document a common format to go along with the MIME type, 
something that common deserves to be documented. As for more complex 
cases of headers, as you have said those can be easily accomodated 
within the basic format while omitting the initial header line used by 
spreadsheets.

Yakov