wbuchanan
commented
2 years ago @NilsEnevoldsen
The alternatives that you are listing are not comparable file formats. The first suggestion that I would have is to drop .doc and .xls. These file formats aren't supported consistently in current versions of MS Word/Excel and the chances that anyone is working with someone that needs a file format that is almost 20 years old (at the time when it was initially discontinued, see Microsoft Office Word 97-2003 Binary File Format (.doc) for additional info) is probably fairly slim. The open office files and .docx and .xlsx are based on the same underlying XML standard and are exchangeable; I assume the same is true for the Apple-specific applications as well. Lastly, it isn't clear what specifically you mean when you say "fixed-format file" which could confuse end-users more.
More importantly, your suggestion also doesn't address the same problem when someone specifies csv or rtf file extensions but really wants a file that will open with the appropriate formatting in some type of Office related product; while RTF does contain formatting information, the same is not true for CSV.
NilsEnevoldsen
There is a class of error that I see quite often, especially among novice Stata users. Call it "faith in the file extension". The most common manifestation I see is saving (not exporting) a graph file (i.e. a .gph) with an image extension (e.g. .png). But I see a recent Statalist user making the same error with esttab and the .xls extension. (This almost works because Excel is smart.)
Commands cannot always save users from their own actions, but some of this confusion might be reduced if a warning were displayed in the following circumstance:
The message would be something like this:
doc, docx, pages, odt: "Writing a fixed-format file with extension ".
$extension". You may want to write an RTF file instead." xls, xlsx, numbers, ods: "Writing a fixed-format file with extension ".$extension". You may want to write a CSV or SCSV file instead" pdf: "Writing a fixed-format file with extension ".pdf". You may want to write a TEX file instead."