On XBRL

Take for example the following. Imagine the amount of junk that is in this small snippet of one S-1 filing.

The payload in this snippet is less than 10 per cent, the rest being junk.

The average size of daily filings at SEC is close to a gigabyte. I have to look at probably a few terabytes of data, and only a few gigabytes are of interest. If this is "user-friendly" am I on some other planet?

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 <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" color=#0000ff>XBRL Instance Document </FONT><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman; BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" color=#0000ff>(incorporated by reference to Exhibit 101.INS to our Registration Statement on Form S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 31, 2012)</FONT></P></TD></TR>

<TR>

   <TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BACKGROUND: #ffffff; PADDING-TOP: 0in" vAlign=top width="8%">

   <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" color=#0000ff>101.SCH</FONT></P></TD>

   <TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BACKGROUND: #ffffff; PADDING-TOP: 0in" vAlign=bottom width="2%">

   <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P></TD>

   <TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BACKGROUND: #ffffff; PADDING-TOP: 0in" vAlign=top width="90%">

   <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" color=#0000ff>XBRL Taxonomy Extension Schema Document </FONT><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman"></FONT></FONT><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><FONT style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: #000000">(incorporated by reference to Exhibit 101.SCH to our Registration Statement on Form S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 31, 2012)</FONT><FONT style="COLOR: #000000"> </FONT></FONT></P></TD></TR>

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The purpose of any Xxxx language is NOT human readability but machine understandability. A machine that has to process theis information or hat has to "understand" it does not need the formatting information (it has zero information content). That being the case, it makes sense to keep all formatting information aside someplace else (usually in some sort of a stylesheet).

Especially, in a depository, it makes no sense whatsoever for this sort of information to add to the clutter. It may not be XBRL junk as you charecterise it, but junk nevertheless.

This sort of clutter did not exist in the pre-XBRL era.

I realise it is not a part of XBRL, but it does waste precious resources of SEC, the data aggregators, as well as researchers. For example, I have to now write programs to remove the chaff from the grain. It should be very easy for the software that created this monster to be able to store just the content information in the database.

HTML should not even enter into the picture for filings. Simple text with just xml/xbrl tags and nothing else should suffice.

Theere are two basic reasons for isolating formatting and structure tags  from the content. First, it makes possible store "once but deliver in many ways" possible. Second, it economises on storage, communication, and processing of data.  

You can see the difference if you look at some of the recent filings with older filings. It is not very difficult to write programs to isolate the crap from these bloated filings, but it is just make work.

I did not mean to blame XBRL for this issue, but am just bringing up the consequences of blind following of whatever the software vendors fling at you without much thought.