[uf-discuss] First version of Currency proposal

[Scott Reynen]

On Oct 11, 2006, at 4:13 PM, Guillaume Lebleu wrote:

> There are some examples on the Web that make use of cents, and my  
> design philosophy with this proposal was to make simple things  
> simple to microformat, and complex things possible to microformat,  
> without requiring publishers to change some of their practices

While a nice design philosophy in general, I don't think "make simple  
things simple" means very much outside the context of what exactly is  
being made simple.  What qualifies as "simple" depends on what you're  
trying to accomplish.  If you're trying to publish monetary values as  
cents, converting those values to dollars to make them machine  
readable is less simple than telling the machine that they're cents  
(assuming there is a standard way to indicate cents, which we don't  
currently seem to have).  But if you're trying to publish monetary  
values as dollars, stating that your unit is dollars is less simple  
than assuming that's the case (or interpreting as much from the "D"  
in "USD").  So which of these tasks should we aim to make simple?   
I'd say the latter, because it's far more common (well over 80%, I  
think).

Peace,
Scott