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

[Yakov Shafranovich]

Graham Klyne wrote:
> 
> I feel compelled to ask the question:  should this really be a text/csv 
> type rather than application/csv?  Past comments by Ned Freed with 
> respect to text/html suggest possibly not, but similarity with 
> text/tab-separated-values suggests maybe yes.  I don't personally feel 
> strongly about this.
> 

Can you point to Ned's message?

> Section 2:
> 
> [[
>    6.  Field containing line breaks (CRLF) and commas should be enclosed
>        in double-quotes.  For example:
> 
>        "aaa","b CRLF
>        bb","ccc" CRLF
>        zzz,yyy,xxx
> ]]
> 
> Are there any CSV applications that actually quote newlines in values?  
> (I'm not sure that my own CSV handling code would accept a newline 
> within a quoted string)
> 

Some of the code I have been working with is happens to do so. I think 
it depends on which application you are using. For example I just tried 
it with OpenOffice Calc v1.1.3 and it accepts newlines within fields.

> [[
>    7.  If double-quotes are used to enclosed fields, then double-quotes
>        inside fields must be surrounded by double quotes.  For example:
> 
>        "aaa","b"""bb","ccc"
> ]]
> 
> This is NOT how Excel handles quotes, nor my own code.  Rather, when a 
> quoted string contains a double-quote character, the double quote is 
> doubled up.  Thus the example would be:
>        "aaa","b""bb","ccc"
> 

I just double checked with the applications that I am using and they 
tend to work the way you describe. I will adjust the draft.

> Section 7.1:
> [[
>    [3]  Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC 793,
>         September 1981.
> ]]
> 
> I think this should be an informative reference, not normative.
> 

Thanks for catching that.

Yakov