[uf-new] Currency brainstorming

[Manu Sporny]

Andy Mabbett wrote:
> I've posted a new "money" microformat straw-man on th wiki:
> 
>         <http://microformats.org/wiki/currency-brainstorming#Straw_man>
> 
> comments and suggested amendments welcome!

Andy, I really like the new hmoney proposal. There is only one issue
that I can see:

The example uses the following markup:

<abbr class="currency" title="USD95M">$95 million</abbr>

however, the following markup possibilities are proposed:

    * [currency-code][number]
    * [currency-code][space][number]
    * [number][currency-code]
    * [number]space[currency-code]

This causes a problem with the above example when using the
[number][currency-code] markup. Take the example of Macedonian Dollars
(MKD) and the Kyat (MMK). If we wanted to mark up 50 million Macedonian
Dollars, we would do the following:

<abbr class="currency" title="95MMKD">95 million</abbr>

However, is this 95 MMK? or is it 95 million MKD? You could make the
parser a bit smarter and attempt to divine what the publisher meant, but
why are we allowing this markup in the first place?

This is one example of where too many options might confuse
publishers... can't we just use one simple markup that is easy for
publishers to understand:

[number][K|M|B|T][space][ISO-4217-currency-code]

I would also argue that we shouldn't even have K, M, B, or T - the full
number should be used.

-- manu