Hello Markus,

In the Microsoft documentation you linked, the name "text qualifier" is misleading. It doesn't mean the value will always be formatted as text by the program. For example, I tried making this CSV:

ID|T1|T2
"01"|"April 6, 2022"|"01234567890123456789"

In a new spreadsheet in Excel, I imported the CSV with the custom delimiter pipe (|), and all three of the values were interpreted as formats other than text. "01" became the integer 1, "April 6, 2022" the date 4/6/2022, and the long number became 1.234567E+18. So adding double quotes around all values to designate a "text" datatype will not work for Excel; users still need to manually change the formats of the cells.

The "Format quoted field as text" is a LibreOffice-specific option that does format all of the values as text, not numbers or dates. To accomplish the same in Excel requires several complicated steps. Examples: https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/stop-excel-convert-text-to-number-date-format-csv-file/

Also, a user might want "April 6, 2022" to be interpreted as a date for calculations, so whitespace in a value doesn't necessarily mean it's supposed to be treated as text.

The current behavior of BaseX will output a CSV that can be correctly interpreted by both Calc and Excel with the correct separators/delimiters set, so I don't believe it should be changed, and even if it were it wouldn't accomplish what you want.

-Tamara

On Wed, Apr 6, 2022 at 8:17 AM Markus Elfring <Markus.Elfring@web.de> wrote:
> My opinion of these results is that they are correct - they meet my expectations.

I find this view interesting.


> Do you feel like these results are missing something?

Yes.


> If so, what specifically?

I am missing text quoting for the fields “ID”, “T1”, “T2” and “T4”.


> Is there something in the documentation that could change to make things more explicit or provide better clarity?

I got such an impression.

Regards,
Markus


--

Tamara Marnell
Program Manager, Systems
Orbis Cascade Alliance (orbiscascade.org)
Pronouns: she/her/hers