I was wondering if it might be possible to get an Editor-XTD Plugin created for the Data Tables Pack so that users would be able to upload CSV files while they are editing an article?

The plugin would also need to be able to dynamically show itself (or not) using the usergroup parameter:
docs.joomla.org/Usergroup_parameter_type
(I have the need for it to only show up for certain types of users, not everyone)

In the Smart Content Configuration we'd be able to choose a folder name that the CSV files would go into that would be shared by all of the users (it would be a nice feature to be able to organize the CSV files into additional folders if possible as well).

I'm thinking that the Editor-XTD button should also allow for users to dynamically create the correct plugin text for inserting the table (that is, users should be able to see a list of all of the subfolders and CSV files in the CSV main folder, then be able to choose what type of grid they want to create in addition to being able to upload new CSV files).

This would make things really nice and easy for my users here at the college .

Typically, we have a lot of work being done in Microsoft Word/Excel, but for tables I would encourage the work to be done in Excel, then have users massage the data into a proper CSV file which they could then upload to the site (this would make table creation so much simpler for them!).

P.S. Additionally, it might be useful if you could have an automatic date parser on the PHP side of things (for example, the file I was working with had a date range written like this: NOV 7-8, which didn't work too well). This isn't that important as I can just encourage users to write out dates fully: 11/7/2008-11/8/2008.
P.S.S. Are there any plans to support an ExtJS powered grid? I admire that JavaScript Framework very much and it would be nice to have it available as an option . The full library itself is pretty large, but I'm thinking if you just plucked out the grid parts of the framework it would be pretty lite.

Hello,

Thanks for your proposals. We think about Editor-XTD Plugin but it seems as specific plugin. About ExtJS framework, it's a good thing, but it require paid license for using in commercial not open source projects. We are planning create repository of free plugins for 'ARI Smart Content' which will be open source and will be distributed under the GPL license. And all people who have 'ARI Smart Content' (Image Pack, DataTable Pack or News Pack) will be able to use these free plugins. We'll add plugins which would use ExtJS in this repository.

Regards,
ARI Soft