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0 pointsFreak_NL2y ago0 comments

Oh absolutely. Don't forget about the giant mess Microsoft made in countries like the Netherlands, where Excel will refuse to automatically open comma-separated values files (you know, CSV), unless the separator is a semicolon — because someone in the past thought that was how the Dutch did it.

You want people to be able to open your nice and sensible CSV files in Excel? First figure out which arcane locale specific settings you need, then generate those monstrosities and annoy anyone who genuinely expected Unicode comma-separated values.

My solution was to just write a generic spreadsheet writer component in our API and have it generate CSV (normal, comma-separated, UTF-8), XLSX, or ODS. Anyone using Excel just grabs the XLSX output. Generating XLSX and ODS was just a matter of saving a minimal example file for each and figuring out where to write cells and rows. No extra library needed (both file formats are just zipped up XML files), and everybody is happy.

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roelschroeven2y ago

Many countries use the comma as decimal separator, and Microsoft in its infinite wisdom thinks that data interchange formats should follow regional formatting settings (that's unbelievably stupid; I'll never understand how such an enormous error not only came to be, but was never corrected). That makes the comma unusable as column separator in those countries for exchange of numerical data.

wouldbecouldbe2y ago

US users have the same in my experience. I've had multiple clients complain the exports are broken, because Excel only imports them (perfectly) but doesn't allow to open them. I thought it was their way of forcing excel files. Iphone & Google Drive no issues.

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roelschroeven2y ago

wouldbecouldbe2y ago

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