Re: Markdown, tables and CSV

[Frank Colcord <fcolcord-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

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I'd like to second this proposal. As a simple Pandoc user, these would be 
very helpful:

 
    ![an image](foo.jpg)
 
    ![an include](foo.txt)
 
    ![a csv to be rendered as a table](foo.csv)
 
thanks for all the development.

Frank

On Friday, May 20, 2016 at 6:55:10 PM UTC+1, jgabriele wrote:
>
> Hi Martin,
>  
> There's also [issue 553](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/553 
> <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjgm%2Fpandoc%2Fissues%2F553&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHFocHh8P3j2zM42EMAMvPZ-kfuPA>
> ).
>  
> Personally, I think I like (from that issue thread) anton-k's original 
> idea:
>  
>     ![an image](foo.jpg)
>  
>     ![an include](foo.txt)
>  
>     ![a csv to be rendered as a table](foo.csv)
>  
> (that is, based on filename extension)
>  
> Those seem sensible, symmetrical, easy to remember, and I think fit well 
> with what pandoc already does (`![]()` is already like an include).
>  
> As for a syntax to allow writing your csv data right into your md file, 
> ... Pandoc already supports a generous number of table formats that are 
> pretty easy to type. And for larger tables that you might be tempted to 
> copy/paste in, might be better easier to bang-include them (as in, 
> `![]()`), rather than muck up your pretty markdown file with a giant bunch 
> of csv data. :)
>  
> -- John
>  
>  
>  
>  
> On Fri, May 20, 2016, at 05:38 AM, Martin Fenner wrote:
>
> Dear group,
>  
> The topic of CSV support in Pandoc has come up several times on this list, 
> includes this thread from 2014:
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pandoc-discuss/kBdJU_JktzI
>  
> Since last year I work for an organisation that frequently deals with 
> tabular data (and helped organize CSVconf earlier this month), and I have 
> done some thinking on how CSV could fit into Pandoc. I see two important 
> use cases:
>  
> * CSV reader that converts to tables in HTML, docx, latex, etc.
> * CSV has a format to describe tables in markdown
>  
> For the first use case I wrote a hack for the Jekyll blogging platform 
> this week that turns CSV files into markdown grid tables format that is 
> then processed by Pandoc (https://github.com/datacite/jekyll-csvy). I 
> would rather use Pandoc with a CSV reader, but my Haskell isn't good enough 
> to write one. But for now I can generate blog posts directly from CSV 
> files. Other people have done similar things with Pandoc and CSV.
>  
> For the second use case I see a clear advantage of CSV over the various 
> attempts to format tables in markdown (simple_tables, multiline_tables, 
> grid_tables, pipe_tables). Everyone (and many tools) understands the CSV 
> format, and you can do most of the things with CSV that the other table 
> formats allow (multi-column formats and column alignment are a bit 
> trickier). This has been done before using Pandoc filters, but I think a 
> Pandoc "csv_tables" Pandoc extension would make this easier for the casual 
> user. Using the grid_tables example from the Pandoc documentation, this 
> could look like this:
>  
> : Sample csv table.
>  
> ,,,
> Fruit,Price,Advantages
> Bananas,$1.34,- built-in wrapper\n- bright color
> Oranges,$2.10, - cures scurvy\n- tasty
> ,,,
>  
> I like three commas on a new line to indicate the start and end of a 
> table, but that is of course open for discussion. The format is much easier 
> to read and edit for humans compared to grid tables, the only tricky bit is 
> maybe the \n for multiline columns. I would think we could add metadata to 
> the fenced table blog similar to code blocks, e.g.
>  
> ,,,{ #mytable .numberRows }
>  
> One challenge with CSV is that it is an ill-defined format somewhat 
> similar to markdown before CommonMark. It may make things easier to only 
> support a specific CSV variant (e.g. comma as separator, header required, 
> comment lines not allowed).
>  
> Thoughts?
>  
> Best,
>  
> Martin
>  
>  
>  
>
>
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