<
jargon> The ability to accept input from later versions of
itself.
Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than {backward
compatibility}, since, in the backward case, the input format
is know whereas a
forward compatible system needs to cope
gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future
compatibility is the stipulation that a
web browser should
ignore
HTML tags it does not recognise.
See also
extensible.
(2003-06-23)