CSV Character Encoding

[cchipman6]

The following comment was received during the review of the NIEM-based Code List Specification being developed for the NATO Core Data Framework (NCDF):

For CSV files there is no mention on the character encoding. For interoperability it is useful to require a specific character encoding, so everybody interprets it in the same way. For example state that it must be in UTF-8, or ISO-8859-1. On windows Excel probably can’t save UTF-8 encoded CSV directly. On Google I see workarounds using Powershell, but this is another hurdle. OpenOffice/Libreoffice seems to have better support. For a practical solution, it needs to be determined what tools should be used, and what the support. For interoperability it is useful to require a specific character encoding, so everybody interprets it in the same way.

Proposed solution: The spec should provide a method for identifying the character encoding of a CSV.

[cchipman6]

3/31/2020 NTAC tech-spec WG: CSV files are to be interpreted as UTF-8.