Sure, exports would be somewhat bigger, especially within xml which tends to waste a lot of space for repeating redundant stuff by design, but that's why I'd always vote for csv for exports anyways!Originally Posted by andrei_c
However, it surely wouldn't be that much bigger.
And speaking of common sense ...
Why would anybody do an export if not for being able to import it somewhere else than OCD? One would use the backup/restore function inside of OCD, but everywhere else you can't do it without a reasonable and complete export. And that's where you simply need any and all of the information that is used in the OCD database or you'd just not be able to rebuild it without losing information. And that's surely not what an export is meant for ...
I know, but what's the motivation for omitting such a tiny bit of information? We're talking about a few bytes for each disc only (15 bytes each in csv plus bytes 15 for the header and ~ <100 bytes each in XML). Who cares about that little bit? Especially compared with not having this information at hand immediately when using the export file?Artwork image filenames have format XXXXXXXX.jpg where XXXXXXXX is value of ID attribute in Volume element. It is a link to image... just without directory and extension.
Just an exaple: My current db backup is about 100 MB, the xml export around 42 MB and the csv export less than 8 MB. None of these values are sizes I'd ever waste a single second of thought on, but why should I ever deal with any of these files as long as they are incomplete? A complete csv shouldn't be much bigger than 10 to 15 MB here and that's still about 1/3 of the utterly useless XML file so size is most likely not the issue here.
Andrei, I understand that you obviously prefer XML over any other export format, as well as I understand it even more, that you don't want to waste any time and energy on modifying it unless there were essential reasons for itCustom field titles are indeed not exported to XML as well as any user settings, but I never thought it could be a problem. There's less than 30 fields total.
Sorry, I still think XML is as full export as it can be (but I'll give you half point for custom field titles)
The only thing I need (and probably many other OCD users too) is the possibility to easily and reliably create a complete csv export with any and all fields and values available in OCD. Unfortunately OCD limits the list of "Available Fields" within the "Export to plain text" dialogue, but it shouldn't be too difficult to remove this limitation and make it export all of it's fields here.
As long as you leave the option to deselect single or multiple fields here, everybody can always create exactly that much of an export as (s)he likes or needs and I guess that would be the best for everyone, wouldn't it?
-pn
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