Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Help with date formatting

On 12-03-04 6:00 AM, Andreas Säger wrote:
> Am 03.03.2012 20:00, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> > - I want to be able to cut and paste lines from a web page into the
> > file, to make small updates. This is why I'm using Calc for editing. OO
> > lets me paste data and it gets treated as I want. Hopefully with your
> > suggestions for configuring LO, it'll do the same.
>
> Collect the pasted HTML data on a sheet template if Calc handles the
> data the way you want. You can use a template sheet with the right
> locale and format settings in the right order of columns. Just paste the
> HTML as unformatted text which will preserve the formatting of the
> target cells rather than the HTML formatting of the source.
> Instead of saving the sheet as csv you may also paste the used cells
> into a text editor before saving which produces tab separated text with
> the numberic strings as displayed on the sheet.
> If some other software is supposed to read your data, English decimals
> with digits and one point only are the universally understood output
> formats for dcimal numbers, dates as ISO dates, percents as decimal
> fractions:

That all sounds much more complicated than the current workflow, which is:

Load the .CSV file into OO Calc.
Open the web page.
Highlight and copy some lines from a table on the web page.
Insert some lines to make space, and paste the lines into OO Calc.
Save the .CSV file.

The date format on the web page isn't ISO or the DD/MM/YY format the CSV 
file was using, it's like this:

02-Mar-12

but in OO it was recognized as a date and converted when the CSV file 
was written.

I have control over the other software that needs to read the CSV file 
(it's an R program), but I don't have control over the formatting of the 
web page.  I suppose I have control over the workflow, but I like the 
simple flow above.


> Raw ISO data like this ...
> > 23123.98        2009-08-30 13:45:59     0.23
>
> are more universal than localized format strings:
> > EUR 23'123,98   8 Aug 2009 1:45:59 pm   23,00%
>
> Including thousands separators, currencies, units or localized dates is
> counter productive when the importing software is interested in plain
> numbers or date values. All databases import English numerals and ISO
> dates without problems.

Yes, I would not have any problems if the CSV file used ISO dates.  The 
problems arise earlier, when LO Calc isn't recognizing that the strings 
are dates.

Duncan Murdoch

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