You're missing my point. If this were a "solved problem," then it would be no better than the status quo with TSV. Tabs are a similar kind of control character, except they can be typed and displayed easily. And TSV files are a mess because tabs end up in the fields themselves. It's a catch-22. (I'm exaggerating; this would still be somewhat better since there will never be a big key on your keyboard dedicated to these ASCII values.)

Tabs are not a record separator. They are a formatting code. That's why a mess is created when they are used to separate records.

You just gave further proof that tabs are a catch-22.

They are if you're saving formatted text in a tsv- thus all the discussion about this rather mediocre attempt to replace them.

Yes, and he also specified why they are different from record separators in this regard.

It's no different, if it can be displayed on the screen and it is on the keyboard, then the user will type it into the text file for how it look, not because they want to really use it as record separator. And if user can type it in the content then you have to escape it, which is back to the same problem with using tabs.

But if it's not on the keyboard, then the user won't type it. So it doesn't get used.

It's very different.

Tab, comma, semicolon are actual characters people DO and need to use inside records. So not only they can be typed into records, they absolutely HAVE to be typed for most textual records.

ASCII record separators are not needed inside records at all. If someone adds them "for how it looks", it's his problem.

One (not using a record separator inside a record) is a matter of choice and doing the right thing. The other (not using comma, semicolon or tab) is a non starter.

Obviously there's a difference.

I'd suggest that the most common tool used to generate and manipulate tabular data is Excel, which has terrible CSV export.