No promises, so don’t hold your breath, but it’s possible that the Securities and Exchange Commission could publish the adopting release on its XBRL rule before the lights go out on 2008.

That’s according to SEC Chief Accountant Conrad Hewitt, who told attendees on Nov. 18 at the Financial Executives International’s conference on Current Financial Reporting Issues that the issuance of the adopting release “may occur before the end of the year, so hang on.”

For those of you who need a refresher, since the proposing release was published back in May, the SEC’s proposed rule would mandate the use of XBRL, with the 500 largest public companies starting to provide XBRL data to the SEC as soon as next spring, and the remainder phased-in in 2010 and 2011.

Hewitt didn’t offer any hints about what the final rule might look like, but noted that companies would “continue to make their filings in EDGAR until we get all of the bugs worked out.”

Meanwhile, Hewitt also noted that OCA is working with Corporation Finance on some of the recommendations made by the Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting related to materiality, the correction of errors, and professional judgment.