- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com>
- Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 17:29:20 +0000
- To: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>
- Cc: Tim Finin <finin@cs.umbc.edu>, "public-csv-wg@w3.org" <public-csv-wg@w3.org>
On 19 February 2014 06:06, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote: > > > Tim Finin wrote: >> The current draft of Syntax for Tabular Data on the Web >> stipulates (sec 3.3) that "Each line of a CSV+ file must contain >> the same number of comma-separated values." While this seems >> reasonable, some existing use cases I'm familiar with allow for >> CSV files with several types of lines that differ in their number >> of columns. Processing the CSV file requires detecting the line >> type and also the presence of an optional terminal column. >> >> Might we explore relaxing the constraint that the CSV file have >> the same number of columns for each line? > > Actually... we have to be careful how we formulate all this. The working group > is not in position to define or not constraints, because we are not in position > to define what CSV is. The only thing we can do is to describe what is out > there, and adapt our output accordingly... > > (Just with my administrative hat on...) We have some wiggle-room. It is quite reasonable for us to say "this is the subset of 'wild CSV' to which we consider our work applicable." The charter http://www.w3.org/2013/05/lcsv-charter also says "Contributing to a new version of RFC 4180" in collab w/ IETF is in scope. And nothing says that RFC-4180 is ground truth w.r.t. what counts as CSV. If it has data in it separated by ',', someone somewhere probably calls it CSV. It's a messy world out there! Dan
Received on Wednesday, 19 February 2014 17:29:56 UTC