Switch preservation format extension from .tab to .tsv

[posixeleni]

Suggestion from Archivematica and Leanne Trimble (ScholarsPortal):
Archivematica is not able to recognize the .tab file extension, because there are multiple kinds of files that can have that extension (e.g. http://fileinfo.com/extension/tab). She is wondering whether there is any chance that Dataverse could consider switching to .tsv, which is basically the same thing but with a unique file extension (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab-separated_values).

[pdurbin]

I like this idea (I used .tsv for files in https://github.com/pdurbin/vim-tsv ) but from a quick look at the code my impression is that ".tab" appears in many places in the code. It doesn't seem to be defined once, from what I can tell.

[axfelix]

Hrm, if we're talking about /preservation formats/, i.e., not something the user ever sees or probably thinks about, can we not just do a quick tsv-to-csv call internally wherever it'd be an issue? https://github.com/Jach/tab2csv

I know tab-separated is still fairly common in social sciences and the sort of disciplines that encounter STATA, SPSS, and other files that Dataverse is developed against, but it seems silly to be hamstrung by the file extension of such a generic and easily-transformed format.

[axfelix]

Clarification: by "internally wherever it'd be an issue," I mean "in the bridge code between Dataverse and Archivematica," not "replacing every instance of hardcoding in the existing Dataverse codebase" :)

[adam3smith]

I brought this up in #585 (comment) originally. Just want to add that .tsv isn't just better internally (e.g. for Archivematica), it's also more widely recognized by user-facing tools and just generally a more widely recognized extension. So if users are going to download this, it's going to work better with .tsv generally speaking

[djbrooke]

Closing in favor of newly-created #6006.

[pdurbin]

https://twitter.com/Ray_J__/status/1202296388618457089 illustrates why Dataverse should use .tsv instead of .tab for tab-separated files. Here's a screenshot:

[cmbz]

To focus on the most important features and bugs, we are closing issues created before 2020 (version 5.0) that are not new feature requests with the label 'Type: Feature'.

If you created this issue and you feel the team should revisit this decision, please reopen the issue and leave a comment.

[pdurbin]

For the record, I still think we should switch from .tab to .tsv. If someone wants to create a fresh issue, I'll give it a 👍 .