[EN] Current state of tools with explicit support for the .hxl extension (in special over .csv)

[fititnt]

Quick links

• IANA
  • https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml#text
  • https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml#application
• Github/linguist
  • https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
• Google Groups HXLProject Mail list
  • Proposal for HXL tags in JSON: https://groups.google.com/g/hxlproject/c/99BiGQUnszo
  • HXL JSON: https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/hxlproject/c/YrX-ByB8h1M

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Note: this issue on @HXL-CPLP in special will be preferable written in English

The main objective of this issue is both document some tests with tools beyond the ones provided by the @HXLStandard organization. While often (and in fact, even HXL-Proxy seems to default to .csv extension, but remove the lines before the first heading) the .hxl files actually have more features than standard .csv. Also some tools, in special the ones that try to make auto detection of values, could get confused by the extra lines of HXL.

[fititnt]

Google Drive consider .hxl extension as binary file.

Google Drive consider .hxl extension as binary file. I did not tested, but I would assume this could means it would not try to apply compression when trying to download such datasets.

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Google Drive don't try to preview .hxl files

This may affect user editing files.

Here the same, but as .txt

[fititnt]

Ok, here a tricky that make Google Drive render .hxl as text file (even somewhat can render as csv like file):

1. Upload the file with .csv (or .tsv) extension., like v_br_cep.tsv
2. Using Google Drive web interface, rename v_br_cep.tsv to v_br_cep.hxl. It will continue to me considered an text file even if you upload a new file v_br_cep.hxl over the old one.

[fititnt]

About GitHub preview (tested on 2020-12-08)

If using HXL on .csv and not prefix metadata at the start of the file it will somewhat works. Good. Not perfect, but good.

With .hxl it will not even try parse

• https://github.com/HXL-CPLP/hxl-sample-data/blob/main/hxldash/hxldash-Ebola-Dataset-1.csv
• https://github.com/HXL-CPLP/hxl-sample-data/blob/main/hxldash/hxldash-Ebola-Dataset-1.hxl