Feature request from the forums:
Is there any way to export my transaction history to a spreadsheet? CSV format would be fine, basically what I want to do is export the table seen in the bitcoin client that lists each transaction time, receiving address, and amount. Then I can tally up the coins received at each address over time.
Only one problem with that, different languages (yes, verbal languages, not programming languages) have different ways to separate each field. This is because the comma , is used as a decimal . everywhere besides the US and UK.
Hi,Hello,Sup
3,5,3
Hi;Hello;Sup
3;5;3
Even though this seems like a subtle difference, there still needs to be some sort of way to select which format you want. I'm not exactly sure how this thing works, seeing as I haven't cloned it yet, but I'd assume that there's a way to check which language they are compiling/using. (I'm thinking #ifdef GERMAN blabla #endif, or something of the sort.) Seeing as Microsoft Excel doesn't prompt the user which to use and guesses based on language (unlike OpenOffice <3) this would have to be implanted. And as a final note, some language versions of Excel don't play nice with Unicode.
I really wish to see this implemented, and I don't want localization issues to be a roadblock. You can just use . as decimal and , as record separator, and anyone who wishes to change it can just do a search-replace with a text editor. Polish like allowing choice of separators, or even detecting them via the OS configuration, can wait.
It will also be intuitive to enable rows selected in the display to be copy-pasted. It's usually possible with similar displays.
CSV is not necessarily intended to be human readable. Europeans writing floats in source code use the period as a decimal, because that's the spec. It would be fine to do as MeniRosenfeld suggested and output decimals using . and , as a field separator.
MeniRosenfeld: I really wish to see this implemented, and I don't want localization issues to be a roadblock. You can just use . as decimal and , as record separator, and anyone who wishes to change it can just do a search-replace with a text editor.
I think it's far better to support such a thing. It's rather unfriendly to tell all non-English users to just go into a text editor and go do it themselves. If you want to have a currency, especially one spanning across multiple countries, user friendliness and making it work in as many places as possible is a must.
sneak: CSV is not necessarily intended to be human readable.
That's the problem, it is. If the specification was just "use . for a decimal separator," there'd be no problem. The problem is some people said "hey, we want , for the decimal separator," so they did.
sneak: Europeans writing floats in source code use the period as a decimal, because that's the spec.
But why not the other way around? Wouldn't you be confused if you had to code in a language that used , as the decimal separator and period as the argument separator? Eventually, you'd probably be able to understand it, correct? The real problem is that although humans would understand it, programs that load CSV may not.
Overall, I really have to say that it matters little, but I'd be really annoyed if I had to do more than my fair share just because a couple of people were too lazy to allow me to select what I want. Little things add up.
That's the problem, it is. If the specification was just "use . for a decimal separator," there'd be no problem. The problem is some people said "hey, we want , for the decimal separator," so they did.
I don't think that's a big problem since Excel (and probably all other popular software) allows to import files with any separator. Of course it would be nice to have a fancy interface to customize export settings, but I think just couple of lines in ini-file would be enough. And the simplest locale-independend solution would be a tab separated file with integer representation of bitcoins (bitcoins*1e8).
The Qt GUI can do this. See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15276
