[Solved] Editing a TSV file

Lone_Wolf · 2025-01-20 13:06:24

A (windows) game I play using wine has many of its settings in Tab Separated Values format .

In the past I used a windows utility TxtEdit that was written specifically to handle those files, but many of its features don't work (well) under wine.

text editors can open the file , but don't understand the header layout in the first line of the file.

Libreoffice calc does open the file and separates columns correctly, but has one problem :
text is aligned to the left, numbers are aligned to the right .

Since the columns mix numbers and text, this makes a messy display that also takes more horizontal space then needed if everything was right-aligned .

I do need the ability to change some values , so converting to another format (like ods) is NOT a solution.

Does anyone know a way to change the layout in calc without changing the content OR an editor that aligns tsv columns correctly ?

I uploaded an example file to http://0x0.st/8HpZ.txt

Awebb · 2025-01-20 15:43:33

Ctrl-a and clicking on your preferred alignment isn't an option?

I personally use VSCode with a CSV plugin that can handle TSV. I'll look it up at home if you're interested, even though I have a feeling you might have strong opinions about vscode

V1del · 2025-01-20 21:36:54

In calc, you can force all cells to be formatted as text rather than numbers should fix the alignment. Edit: And pressing the alignment button appears to work as well

Last edited by V1del (2025-01-20 21:40:25)

Lone_Wolf · 2025-01-21 13:10:29

In the import window I can use CTRL+A to select all columns and change their type to text.
This works for viewing , I'll have to test if editing values and saving the file changes more then just the edited values.

Using the alignment buttons adds aligment info to the document which is unwanted.

@Awebb :
MS has done many good things and created high quality applications.
Unfortunately code uses electron which means chromium & node.js .

Both have many disadvantages and are not welcome on my personal systems.

Awebb · 2025-01-21 13:25:37

I wasn't aware CSV could hold alignment info, I was under the impression that this was lost on save and had to be done every time you open the file.

Thought so about vscode, but I had to mention it, because it works so well. Never enjoyed csv/tsv until code.

seth · 2025-01-21 22:03:03

So I opened that file in the greatest and best texteditor in the world (tribute) and (because it can read from stdin and I've a curl shortcut I can just copy and paste into that shortcut and *bang* it's there - isn't that awesome? Anyway, I digress) so I opened it and set the tab width to 32 chars and get a relatively reasonable display of that stuff.
You just need to scroll horizontally. Quite a lot.

Basically this should work w/ every texteditor (and maybe even emacs): raise the tab width above the longest token in the table.

Lone_Wolf · 2025-01-22 12:01:16

Changing tab width does indeed improve the display, hadn't thought of that.

In wp 5.1 DOS it was possible to adjust tab stops individually that would be perfect.
Need to verify if current editors still support that.

seth · 2025-01-22 14:50:26

You mean have different tab stops for different tabs (1st tab 9em, 2nd tab 32em, 3rd tab 3em, …)?

https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/stat … aBase.html actually seems to allow to set random tab stops - I guess you'd have to special-case the mimetype, parse the first line to get the tab widths(?) or the entire text to find the widest token in each column and set them accordingly.

Sounds like a very niche solution.
If you can't find anything (though I guess you're looking for some word processor like abiword etc?, this isn't how text editors typically act), bump this thread.
I'm not promising anything but sounds challenging and pointless enough

Edit: disappointed by sc which cannot handle the tsv format.

Last edited by seth (2025-01-22 14:51:02)

Lone_Wolf · 2025-01-22 15:31:08

Yes, setting tabstops at different locations is what I meant.

Setting manually would be doable as there are just a few files (5 or 6 layouts) I need this for, but there seems to be a better way :

dynamic tabstops implemented by nick-gravgaard as elastic tabstops .

There is also a mention of a plugin for VS studio that adds elastic tabs support to it.
Awebb, could you check if that plugin works with the code editor from arch repos ?

Awebb · 2025-01-22 16:37:26

I do not see a VSCode plugin, only Visual Studio.

seth · 2025-01-22 20:15:13

emacs is in that list, I guess the shortcut is ctrl+alt+butterfly

Lone_Wolf · 2025-01-23 13:14:17

After looking at the options I am now testing textadept with the plugin at https://github.com/joshuakraemer/textad … c-tabstops

Things look good and columns are correctly aligned with headers . Some columns are wider then should be necessary, but that's all.

The package builds and runs fast, program also seems lightweight.

Lone_Wolf · 2025-01-26 12:53:20

After testing some more with other tsv files I will stay with TextAdept .

I very much prefer having dedicated tools for jobs instead of 1 tool for all jobs and already have 4 editors(nano , mcedit, krusader built-in editor, kate) installed so don't mind a 5th .

Marking as solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-01-20 13:06:24

[Solved] Editing a TSV file

#2 2025-01-20 15:43:33

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#3 2025-01-20 21:36:54

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#4 2025-01-21 13:10:29

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#5 2025-01-21 13:25:37

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#6 2025-01-21 22:03:03

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#7 2025-01-22 12:01:16

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#8 2025-01-22 14:50:26

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#9 2025-01-22 15:31:08

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#10 2025-01-22 16:37:26

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#11 2025-01-22 20:15:13

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#12 2025-01-23 13:14:17

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

#13 2025-01-26 12:53:20

Re: [Solved] Editing a TSV file

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