[uf-new] Currency brainstorming

[Manu Sporny]

Just throwing out some thoughts on currency/hmoney...

Andy Mabbett wrote:
> It may not be so important for recipes, but it's about to be used in
> hAudio.
> 
> At its simplest form, money (aka "currency") can be:
> 
>         <span class="hmoney">
>           <span class="amount">[number]</span> (or "quantity" ?)
>           <span class="currency">[ISO 4217 code]</span>
>         </span>

+1, Agreed.

> Alternatively, money could be a subset of "hMeasure", with ISO 4217
> codes as units:
> 
>         <span class="hmeasure">
>           <abbr class="currency" title="USD">$</abbr>
>           <span class="amount">5</span>
>         </span>

It could be... but I'd rather not go down the hMeasure route until
examples have been collected. We have enough examples for currency via
hAudio to come up with the first draft of currency. Perhaps in the
future, currency will be a subset of hMeasure... but that is getting
ahead of ourselves.

>    *    sub-divisions (cents, pennies, etc.)
> 
> I think we should, perhaps, set aside archaic currencies for now.

+1 - no need to address archaic currencies right now... don't even know
if regular publishers even mark up these figures. Do we have any
non-niche examples of that happening?

> It may even be necessary, for the first draft, to also set aside the use
> of subdivisions. 

I think the currency-issues page has a good proposal for how we deal
with subdivisions[1]. I'm fine with setting this aside for right now,
but I think it something that could be agreed upon within a week or two.

> We will, when we do use them, have to address the issue
> that people publish, say:
> 
>         10 cents
> 
> without specifying a currency.

This issue should be stated on the currency-issues page.

> Also, I've previously explained why historic amounts should be dated.
> This could be achieved by:
> 
>         <span class="hmoney">
>           ...which cost
>           <abbr class="currency" title="USD">$</abbr>
>           <span class="amount">5</span>
>           in <abbr class="date" title="1923-10">October 1923</abbr>.
>         </span>
> 
> though a more specific class-name ("money-date", say) might be
> advisable.

This issue should be stated on the currency-issues page.

-- manu

[1]http://microformats.org/wiki/currency-issues#Alternative_2