[QGIS-Developer] Editable CSV files

[Nyall Dawson]

On 20 July 2017 at 00:35, Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Thanks all for your feedback. The "Add delimited text" way of loading CSV
> data is a lot more powerful and more flexible than the OGR way. So I would
> really prefer to use the CSV this way and still be able to edit and save
> directly to the CSV.
>
> Would this be possible as an enhancement?

I still think the "proper"/"most open source ecosystem friendly"
approach here would be to port the extra features which QGIS'
delimited text provider has across to GDAL's csv driver. Then the "add
delimited text" button would become just a frontend for setting up the
parameters for GDAL's driver (and possibly auto-creation of a csvt
file too).

Given that gdal already supports editable csv (and is used by many
projects outside of QGIS), it seems more friendly to the wider
community if any investment was about enhancing gdal's driver instead
of adding write support within QGIS only.

That's just my 2c!


Nyall

> I don't need concurrent/simultaneous editing with Spreadsheets. All I want
> is an editable CSV directly from QGIS, so that it could be at a later time,
> be opened in Spreadsheets again (not opened at the same time in QGIS as
> well).
>
> Andreas
>
>
> On 19.07.2017 16:23, Stefan Keller wrote:
>>
>> Nice hints, Bernhard and Nyall
>> Thinking about, there's no really complicated technical reason why
>> concurrent editing would not work.
>> It's simply a matter in which mode the reader SW opens the file.
>> * QGIS delimited text provider: locks.
>> * QGIS OGR data provider: does not lock - but not ask to reload if
>> file has changed.
>> * LibreOffice Writer and Excel: lock
>> * Notepad++: does not lock - and asks to reload if file has changed
>> * Other text editors: depends...
>>
>> So, in fact e could slightly enhance the situation, if QGIS delimited
>> text provider would not lock (and eventually ask to reload when file
>> changed).
>> The remaining problem is that we can't change the behaviour of
>> LibreOffice Writer (Windows) nor Excel short term...
>> Eventually someone could ask the LibreOffice Writer dev's for a solution?
>>
>> :Stefan
>>
>>
>> 2017-07-19 8:48 GMT+02:00 Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> On 19 July 2017 at 15:45, Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Is there a particular technical reason why csv/text files aren't
>>>> editable in
>>>> QGIS? Or is this mainly for historical reasons and it could be
>>>> implemented
>>>> as editable with reasonable effort?
>>>>
>>> It depends how they are loaded. If you load them using the delimited
>>> text provider, then no, they aren't editable.
>>>
>>> BUT.....
>>>
>>> if you load them as a ogr layer, they will be! (Since GDAL supports this)
>>>
>>> So drag and drop them to QGIS, or add via the "add vector layer"
>>> button and they'll be editable.
>>>
>>> Nyall
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>