Pip delimiters - cross-reference

[ben-norton]

tdwg/dwc-qa#209

@mjy

"An observation.

We're starting to work with aggregated reports on data submitted to GBIF.

TaxonWorks uses pipes (|) to delimit multiple values, as exemplified in many examples in the term standard.

Reports are coming to use that also use Pipes (e.g. copy-past of sql dumps).

Github permits tables in Markdown ... that use pipes

If we want to clean up reporting "formatting", to better round-trip feedback, then Markdown might be useful as an intermediate format for exchanging issues. However, when we want to include data values in those reports, and those values contain pipes, then we have rendering issues. Obviously we can escape pipes, but this requires another layer of handling.

I'm wondering 2 things:

Should we move away from suggesting pipes as delimiters?

Why doesn't TDWG simply require a specific (non-pipe) delimiter when defining multiple values per term? Surely this character-based standard would greatly increase data interoperability.