Re: Markdown, tables and CSV

[Sergio Correia <sergio.correia-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

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A bit late to the party, but:

1) An alternative to using extensions to indicate the required action would 
be to use protocols.
For instance, this example pandoc filter:

http://scorreia.com/software/panflute/guide.html#calling-external-programs

Thus, you can do

[Caption of the Table](csv://some/path.csv)

Or maybe

[some/path.md](include://)



2) For tables, I would also suggest to take a look at this filter:

http://scorreia.com/software/panflute/guide.html#yaml-code-blocks

It allows markdown like this:

Some text

~~~ csv
title: Some Title
has-header: True
---
Col1, Col2, Col3
1, 2, 3
10, 20, 30
~~~

More text


This combines pure CSV with options set up in YAML, so you can add captions 
and customize the table.

Since the CSV is handled by python's CSV library, it is quite powerful. 
Also, complex things like selecting a subset of rows/cols, or adding 
format, could be done in 1-2 lines of code. If you are interested, shoot me 
an email and I can add a more complex working example.

Cheers,
S


On Wednesday, May 25, 2016 at 7:18:10 AM UTC-7, Frank Colcord wrote:
>
> 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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>>  
>>
>

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