I don't agree with giving up csvs until the following conditions are met:
1) A truly open format is available and accessible. Csvs are textfiles. There is no system around that cannot open a textfile. If the format is binary or requires patents or whatever, then it's a non-starter.
2) Applications have a speed increase from using csvs. To wit, I loved csvs because often they finish preparing much faster than a "formatted" output in excel, etc. and sometimes I just want to see the numbers, not have everything colored or weird features like merged cells in excel, etc.
3) The new format should not be grossly larger than the one it is replacing. Extracts in Excel format are orders of a magnitude larger than csv in filesize. This affects run-time to prepare the extract, open it (memory constraints, etc.)
Is there truly a problem? The author is not forced to use csvs.
1) A truly open format is available and accessible. Csvs are textfiles. There is no system around that cannot open a textfile. If the format is binary or requires patents or whatever, then it's a non-starter.
2) Applications have a speed increase from using csvs. To wit, I loved csvs because often they finish preparing much faster than a "formatted" output in excel, etc. and sometimes I just want to see the numbers, not have everything colored or weird features like merged cells in excel, etc.
3) The new format should not be grossly larger than the one it is replacing. Extracts in Excel format are orders of a magnitude larger than csv in filesize. This affects run-time to prepare the extract, open it (memory constraints, etc.)
Is there truly a problem? The author is not forced to use csvs.