Welcome @notaplatypus!
Am I right that you're suggesting the following two changes?
- The option to remove filenames and group names from the data
- The ability to use the same name for two fields in two different groups
For (2), like @ggalmazor, I'd been working under the assumption that this was already allowed. It sounds like it is allowed in the XForm spec, but XLSForms do not allow it. @LN, do you think it'd be possible to remove this restriction from XLSForms? @notaplatypus, can you think of a time when you've run up against this restriction?
I have more experience with suggestion (1). When I wrote odkmeta to import Briefcase data to Stata, a common request was to remove group names from column headers as part of the import. We ended up adding that as an option: odkmeta includes group names by default, but users can choose to remove them if they prefer.
This is often useful in Stata in particular, because Stata variable names can be a maximum of 32 characters, which can be well short of the length of a long field name when it's qualified by its group names. (A Stata "variable" is similar to the column of a spreadsheet.) Without removing group names, it's not uncommon for the column headers of a Briefcase .csv file to result in duplicate Stata variable names.
I think some other servers also present this as an option, for example, KoBo users see an option to include/exclude group names when exporting data.
Like @ggalmazor said, it does seem possible that removing group names would result in duplicate column headers. In odkmeta, if there are two field names with the same name and the user chooses to remove group names, odkmeta will remove group names from the first variable's name but will not modify the second variable's name. As a result, the second variable sometimes ends up with an ugly Stata variable name like var123. I also like @notaplatypus's suggestion of removing group names, then appending numbers to disambiguate any duplicate column headers that result.
Assuming there's a viable strategy to resolve duplicate names, rather than adding this functionality through an XLSForm setting, it might end up being easier to add it as an option in Briefcase/Aggregate/Central. For it to work with Google Sheets, maybe there would need to be a Collect setting as well under the Google Sheets settings...
Like @ggalmazor, I've never encountered filename prefixes: I've only seen group names. @notaplatypus, you're creating your form using XLSForms and XLSForm Offline, right? Can you share an example XLSForm for which you're seeing filename prefixes?