If it's literally a table of strings, why on earth would anyone use ODF/OOXML? CSV is perfectly fine for editing in any functioning spreadsheet software, works reasonably well in version control (especially since a given commit won't touch multiple columns). In his case, he's using the XML format which Haxe will parse into compile-time-checked references right in his source code; sounds like a great reason to use this standardized(but Haxe-specific) XML format.
yeah I don't see any reason not to use that XML format. CSV can be problematic because it doesn't declare it's own encoding and doesn't play as nice with translation tools as something with named fields, such as XML or JSON.
CSV has no formatting. Who wants to resize columns and set up text wrapping every time you open the file. Could save it as .xlsx and then export to CSV, but that's another step and it's not hard to parse simple spreadsheets in XML. Worth it in my book, because it enables fan translators to contribute easily since everyone has Excel.
It's not about you, though. Or me. It's about what the people working with you are most comfortable with. I can go blurf out JSON or XML or potfiles by hand, whatever. But normal people are going to go "er, no?" and even if you win that argument you've lost social capital on something that didn't really matter.
I really don't like how you're putting words in his mouth. He said nothing to suggest that he felt Excel was inadequate for editing CSVs. That's your opinion. And, it's not exactly streamlined, but it's good enough that Microsoft will suggest using it for that purpose. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-or-edit-csv-...
