Eric Wood wrote: > Mathias Bauer wrote: >> The problem of this issue: *every* text file is a "delimited" file. It >> is (nearly?) impossible to differentiate between a "delimited" and a >> "normal" text file. So the result would be that Calc opened nearly every >> text file. In this case I think the current default (Writer) overall is >> the better one. >> > Not when the text file is of obvious columnar data. There two main > standards - TAB and CSV. I don't understand that "every" text file is > reasonably delimited.
Calc allows to use arbitrary delimiters in such files - every text files at least uses line ends and so make up a pattern that could be seen as "delimited". I just wanted to make the point that it is impossible to detect *all* possible files that the user might want to import as a "delimited" file. Of course it might work for some of them but I'm sure trying to detect "delimited" files will create a not so low number of false positives and users will start to complain that they wanted to get these files opened in Writer but now they get Calc. > All the loader has to do is sample the first few lines for '09' tab > chars or "," patterns and hand it off to calc instead of writer. Did you consider that these characters also appear in "normal" text files? The detection will be quite complicated and it will never be as exact as e.g. the detecion of OOo's own file formats. > I can rename a TAB file to be a .XLS extension and Excel detects that > this is obvious columnar data and bring it right in - no user > intervention - bam! Even if I made the text file extension name be > .ODS, .SXC or whatever that the host OS has "associated", the openoffice > loader shouldn't ignore that "junk.ods" was supposed to be loaded by > Calc (by the users explicit purpose of association) but keeps getting > handed off to Writer. That has been fixed in OOo2.1. A text file with extensions xls will be opened in Calc by default. And as I wrote at least two times: if you open a file with Calc instead of OOo it will work even in OOo2.0.4. You can even register scalc.exe as the handler for xls files in your system and then doubleclicking the xls files will open them in Calc. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
