RE: [xml-dev] How to be nimble, agile in the face of changingtechnologie

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Great discussion!

John Cowan wrote:

> Tim Bray's stuff on internationalization (back when it was a new 
> and radical idea) showed that the cost of i18n at development time 
> is about 10%, whereas after the fact it's about 100%.

John, do you have a reference for this, that shows the numbers you cite?

> This is a specific case of a more general point ...

Again, it would be awesome to have a reference for this. Is this a documented principle that you are describing?

> it is always simplest to hard-code all assumptions, but 
> it *will* force redesign further down the line, and the 
> more assumptions, the more redesign.  

In the case of the discussion at hand, the assumption is what? Is it the following? Assumption: The larger XML community will always use XML Schema so just create data models using XML Schema. 

/Roger