Filed accounts processing alters iXBRL formatting

I’ve used the CH filing API to submit iXBRL accounts for companies, and I notice a formatting anomaly regards handling of spacing. I’ve noticed the same anomaly in files modified by others.

  • The iXBRL accounts are rendered to a PDF file, as expected. The rendering works in the same way as the iXBRL online rendered provided by developers. Figures in tables are neatly aligned, and the document rendering appears correct. The PDF is made available for anyone to download and view in the filing section of the CH Find Information About a Company site.
  • The raw iXBRL accounts are also made available for download in the filing section on of the same site. However, the iXBRL file is not identical to the original iXBRL file. By my analysis, the XHTML in the iXBRL file appears to be pretty-printed, introducing extra spaces and newlines. This causes rendering to be different to the original, and so e.g. figures in tables in accounts I have submitted do not align properly and differ from the filed PDF.

For testing I have confirmed that this happens with Firefox and Chrome.

Possibly not many people are using the iXBRL to view accounts, and so this may not be getting much notice? Is it expected that iXBRL are formatted correctly on view? Is the iXBRL handling documented?

For anyone else with this issue, I notice this appears to have gone away (been fixed?) between September 2022 and September 2023.

The iXBRL documents filed in 2022 contain modifications to the document which I filed, which break the formatting. The iXBRL documents filed in 2023 appear to be identical to the document which was filed by me and display correctly.