I think "Foresight" is the key. Fundamentally this is the same
problem/question on any DB/Data language/platform. What is the effect of
adding an unused "future" field to say
* A relational Table
* A C++ or Java object
* A method signature
* A paper form
* A contact
* Your desk drawer
* A wall outlet
* A standard connector (DB25 etc. ...)
The difference, IMHO, with XML is in the greater likelihood of data
*interchange* ... although it may be similar to say a field in a web
service.
My opinion
1) Unless you *are absolutely certain* what this field will be in the future
and how it is supposed to be interpreted, and is documented. Don't do it.
2) If you do it, make it *optional* so that document instances do not have
to populate this "future" field/attribute.
3) Create a V1 schema which makes the field required to be empty (???)
OR
4) Why not simply omit it from the V1 schema ? and add it later if needed ?
5) Don't do it.
----------------------------------------
David A. Lee
http://www.xmlsh.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Kay [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 12:41 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Include data that may be objectively generated some
day?
>More generally, what will be the consequence of adding this element to
the Book XML vocabulary?
It's an open invitation to tag abuse: someone will discover that nothing
breaks if they use this field to hold a readability metric for the book,
and so they will use it for that, or for something else.
Of course, "tag abuse" is a loaded term. I have seen examples where tag
abuse delivered superb new functionality in a system at very low cost.
But perhaps that could have been achieved without tag abuse if the
designers had had more foresight.
Michael Kay
Saxonica
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