Applications that still support the DIF format are Collabora Online, Excel,[note 1] Gnumeric, and LibreOffice Calc.
Bob Frankston developed the format, with input from others, including Mitch Kapor, who helped so that it could work with his VisiPlot program.
DIF stores everything in an ASCII text file to mitigate many cross-platform issues back in the days of its creation.
On the other hand, data chunks start with a number pair and the next line is a quoted string or a keyword.
Some implementations are insensitive to errors in the dimensions of the table as written in the header and simply use the layout in the DATA section.