Do I think we should keep looking for a more universal, metadata and format rich format? Absolutely because, right now, you can't even just copy and paste between MS products without something going wrong.
I couldn't agree more. I don't know why you think I'm whining. I'm merely pointing out that there is no reasonable standard way of doing this.I just want to shake you guys out of your Comedy-Limited mentality for sharing tabular data. It isn't good enough. Do we want another generation to wince when asked to export a report to a spreadheet? Does anybody seriously attempt to suggest that XML is a reasonable attempt at doing so? CSV, bless it, has no built-in way of transmitting the metadata and has design flaws (e.g. the decimal comma, and the 'escaping' of the end-of-line)
Given just a little bit of encouragement, I think might shall just go away and produce a standard myself. After all, if Doug Crockford can produce JSON virtually single-handed, then it must be achievable.
Best wishes,
Phil Factor