It’s filing season and quarterly reports are flowing into the SEC in the newly mandated XBRL format, which is mputer readable. How is it going? No major mplaints, though a uple of issues have understandably surfaced for mpanies filing for the first time in this format. One has to do with how the XBRL mputer de gets aesthetically rendered into human-readable web pages. So much attention has been focused on how to create XBRL data that the issue of how to render it for human nsumption has been overlooked by most mpanies.

panies are required to also post their XBRL files on their rporate webs for the public. The problem mpanies are disvering is that various web browsers and the various XBRL viewers don’t all render the information the exact same way. The information is aurate, but can be innsistent in what and how it is displayed.

The issue prompted the SEC and XBRL US anization lat week to host an ad hoc online discussion for ncerned IR personnel, moderated by EDGAR Online’s CEO Philip Moyer. The event is archived here.

Graphic rendering of XBRL is a mpletely separate issue from the one XBRL was designed to solve, but with the first wave of XBRL files appearing on mpany webs, the need for better rendering has beme a big ncern. No one wants investors looking at poorly designed or inmplete documentation.

Fortunately, the rendering of the XBRL mputer de will not affect shareholders. The SEC may someday only require the XBRL format, but for now, mpanies submit their financials in dual formats: the XBRL version for mputer nsumption, and the nventional HTML (and PDFs) for human viewing.

But the issue of human-readable XBRL files is very important for any XBRL application analysts may use. It’s an issue that we are very familiar with at EDGAR Online, since we spend about half the mpany’s total time on making sure that we render XBRL tagged data fully and clearly in our online analytical tools such as I-Metrix and EDGAR Pro — in the way we humans have me to expect with web-based information. That means visual clarity and easy readability.

Things that don’t matter to mputers make a world of difference to people, such as how text and lumns line up, boldface headers, readable fonts and type sizes, lors, graphs, charts, with all the information included and footnotes where humans expect to see them.

The SEC and XBRL mmunity was aware this issue would me up, so the SEC had prepared a viewer on its own web where XBRL filings can be read in plain English (and the translation checked for auracy by the reporting mpany). But it’s ugly.

We agree with the SEC that the marketplace will quickly resolve the issue, and we expect to see a wide variety of specialized web applications soon that render, use, or create XBRL financial reports and analyses.