Re: word definitions please

[Steve Fouts <stefou -at- ESKIMO -dot- COM>]

The following message appeared on my news reader without the listserv
footer,
leading me to believe that perhaps this wasn't distributed to the entire
list.
Frank Kronberg at Alation wrote:

> I.     Please send to me your comments regarding the definitions of
> these words:
>
> 1.    expandability
>
> 2.    extensibility
>
> 3.    extendability or extendibility.
>
> Specifically, in a written description of the features of a software
> application,
> how would you use these three words?

Part of the problem is that extensible, extendable, and extendible are all
synonyms. They all mean capable of being extended. A software program is
extensible if a second party (someone other than the software designer) can
write custom code that can be included in some way to extend the
capabilities of the software.

Photoshop plug ins and browser plug ins are examples of software extension.

Expandability is not a word I expect to see used with software. Usually I
see hardware described as expandable if there is some mechanism by which
you can increase the hardware's capabilities, usually by adding more
hardware (RAM boards, cache, video accelerators, and the like).

> II.     Also, I have noticed on some web pages, the acronym XML
> spelled out as "exstensible (sic) markup language";

This is entirely in keeping with the the definition of the term. XML is
a markup language that can be extended by writing custom language
extensions.

> Is "exstensible" a real word?

It's in Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition.

Steve Fouts, stefou -at- eskimo -dot- com

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=