lynx-dev an opening for Lynx?

[Philip Webb]

[ the last paragraph of this story is a gauntlet thrown at Lynx ... ]

Financial Times (London) 990901

US Accountants try to harness the Internet -- Richard Waters, New York

The US accounting establishment has thrown its weight
behind an Internet technology that could eventually transform
on-line use of financial information about US companies.

Provided it is able to win wide support in corporate America, the
initiative would potentially make it much easier for investors and
others to search for, and analyse, financial data over the internet.

For software companies, meanwhile, it could open up a big new market,
as demand grows for browsers and other software tools that can handle
the new technology, as well as for new accounting software used by companies.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants said earlier
this week that, along with the Big Five accounting firms, it was backing
development of a new internet speci-fication for the preparation
of financial information.

The mark-up language, if widely adopted by companies when they post
financial figures online, would make it easier to search for and analyse
information the Web: "A lot of financial information is available
on web sites at the moment, but not in usable form", said Louis Mathern,
AICPA information technology director.

Users have to access a particular company's financial statements,
either through its own web site or a database such as that maintained
by the Securities and Exchange Commission, then download the figures
on to their personal computers.

Using the new specification -- XFRML -- , it would become possible
to search for information across a range of companies with a single
instruction and collate information from a number of sources; it could
then be downloaded on to a spread sheet and be used to analyse and compare
financial performance across a range of companies.

The Big Five accounting firms, along with Microsoft and several other
technology companies, have joined the development project.

The latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer is thought to be
the only browser able to make use of the new technology at the moment.
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