We added calamine support for 2.2, so we can theoretically deprecate these 2 engines in favour of calamine to reduce our dependencies and just code that isn't needed anymore
Comment From: rhshadrach
+1
In general I'm okay with supporting any "good enough" engine even if it means we have multiple engines for certain formats, but neither of these fit that criteria in my opinion. I would wait a bit for users to give feedback on calamine though. Also might think about deprecating the default to become calamine first, then deprecating these altogether?
Comment From: asishm
I like the idea of making calamine the default first and then deprecating (similar transition had taken place when the default engine was changed for xlsx files)
Comment From: jbrockmendel
For my edification, is calamine better in some way than the others? IIRC xlrd is not maintained; is that accurate?
Comment From: rhshadrach
xlrd is not maintained; is that accurate?
Yes - and for pyxlsb, it doesn't offer some features that I would consider basic, like reading datetimes.
Comment From: jbrockmendel
Time to move forward with this?