The terminology of compatibility
My previous post pointed out to me a failing of terminology to describe compatibility. To paraphrase FOLDOC:
- Backward/downward compatibility means playing DVD discs in Blu-Ray players. It is a property of the new system.
- Forward/upward compatibility means DVD players were originally designed to play Blu-Ray discs with some level of degradation. It is a property of the old system. (This is not true, of course. DVD players have no idea what a Blu-Ray disc is and will spit it right out. The physical layer wasn’t designed to be gracefully forward compatible.)
I’m looking for a term that means that Blu-Ray discs were designed to be played in DVD players. It’s a property of the new system; the new system was built to work with the old system, the old system never had a clue about the new system.
September 13th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Part of the problem stems from point-of-view. You can say that Blu-Ray discs are compatible with DVD players; this means Blu-Ray discs were designed to be playable in DVD players.
If you change POV to the “other side” of the equation, then the compatibility terminology may be different.
I don’t agree with your statement that a DVD player was designed to play Blu-Ray with degreadation. The DVD player designers were not clairvoyant; they designed the DVD player to play DVDs. They also made DVD players backward-compatible with CDs (because DVD players read CDs). But it was the Blu-Ray disc designers who created the Blu-Ray media to be backward-compatible with the DVD player.
Forward compatibility as cited in FOLDOC, e.g. a web browser ignoring unrecognized HTML tags, makes sense. No clairvoyance needed: You simply ignore what you don’t understand and hope for the best.
September 15th, 2006 at 10:24 am
You’re right, I used a bad example. Of course DVD players don’t konw a thing about Blu-Ray; that was just a hypothetical to demonstrate the meaning of forward compatibility, and to show that it’s not the word I’m looking for.
Forward and backward compatibility both have a point of view embedded within them: forward compatibility is from the POV of the old system, and backward compatibility is from the POV of the new system. I’m looking for a word that means the same as forward compatible but from the POV of the new system.
September 17th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Something like “We designed Blue-Ray media and formats to be compatible with existing DVD players?” Doesn’t the word “compatible” by itself work?
Of course, one could ask that they define “compatible.” So they would more like state the media was designed to be played on existing equipment.