[chirp_users] Chirp won't read CSV files correctly

[Dan Smith]

Hi Eric,

> I am a fairly advanced user of Chirp myself at this point, but to me 
> it is easy to understand how a new user gets stuck in this mess 
> because I've done it myself as a new user often enough.

Sure, the average user thinks "A CSV file is a CSV file, so I should be
able to import it just like I can import a .DOC file into OpenOffice."

However, you know this is not actually how it is. It's like saying
"Microsoft Word supports XML files." It surely does, but only XML files
formatted in *very* specific ways :)

> The logical thought process is that I can pull these files into 
> something (often Excel or OO), do some adding, deleting, and moving 
> of rows and spit out a bigger CSV with what I want to build my 
> image.

...snip...

> It would be extremely helpful however, if Chirp had a slightly more 
> robust format *intended* for interchange and manipulation.

If you would like to implement an Excel-like import dialog that allows
you to customize everything about the import, including how to interpret
columns that are titled and formatted in ways that CHIRP doesn't
understand, please do. Patches are definitely welcome.

As you probably know, something like Excel has logic that tries to
interpret lots of different formats for the few data types that it
supports (number, date, currency, etc). It gets it right sometimes and
wrong others. We have data types that are enumerations, and for which
there could be lots of different methods of notation. Duplex could be
"+/-/None/Split" like chirp uses, or "positive/negative/none" or
"up/down/neither", or be missing entirely for something like a
commercial band plan. PL codes could be listed in motorola syntax, by
frequency, etc. Power levels could be in dBm, watts, "high/med/low" etc.
The more of these you support, especially without known-named columns,
the harder it is to make it "just happen" for most people. If you want
to work on making this better, please (please) feel free to send patches :)

The biggest difference between Excel and CHIRP is, of course, the size
of the budget and the funding of the team. CHIRP developers implement
things that they want to implement, with no compensation. Almost nobody
works on the UI of CHIRP because doing so is complex and time-consuming.
Interpreting CSV files of more varied formats will involve a lot more
UI-level work to allow the user to customize how CHIRP interprets the
data. If this is what motivates you, please feel free to work on it.

Thanks!

--Dan