RE: [xml-dev] On the promotion and demotion of information items (was Re: [xml-dev] RE: Take 2 - How do you replace comments from XML?)

I still see data dictionary entries with so-called, reserved for future use, 
fields.  It usually means the designer had a clever notion and then decided 
it was YAGNI for now, or ran out of time.  Maybe it is a habit like being 
a pack rat and never throwing away anything that could *possibly* be useful. 
They also document the obsolete fields.  Why?  The conversion folks get lost 
otherwise.

The neanderthal lives on in all of us.

len

From:  [mailto:]

As long as Len is going on his Neanderthal nostalgia, I might mention
that when I programmed for a certain government entity, and they used
fixed record-length files (don't ask), the requirement was to allocate
so many bytes at the end of each structure one designed for a field
that had to be called FFU. For Future Use.