1. XBRL supporters include a consortium of over 450 CPA firms, companies (for example, Microsoft), regulators (for example, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)), and standard setters and accounting bodies (for example, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the International Accounting Standards Committee and Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (Debreceny and Gray2; FASB3; Trites4).
2. Debreceny, R. and Gray, G. L. (2001) The production and use of semantically rich accounting reports on the internet XML and XBRL. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems 2 (1): 47–74.
3. Financial Accounting Standards Board. (2000) Business Reporting Research Project: Electronic Distribution of Business Information. Norwalk, CT: Financial Accounting Standards Board.
4. Trites, G. (1999) The Impact of Technology on Financial and Business Reporting. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.
5. This freedom of choice would probably vary by user. Choice by institutional investors might be constrained by organisational policies promoting the use of XBRL-enabled analysis tools, while nonprofessional investors would be completely free to choose among available methods.