Re: Historians- what is origin of i18n, l10n, etc.?

From: Hideki Hiura (hiura@li18nux.org)
Date: Thu Oct 10 2002 - 15:19:00 EDT

  • Next message: Barry Caplan: "Re: Historians- what is origin of i18n, l10n, etc.?"

    > From: Markus Scherer <markus.scherer@jtcsv.com>
    > Barry Caplan wrote:
    > > There is a link with the story on the fron page of www.i18n.com
    > Nice story, similar to the one with Gary Miller. It seems like we
    > have three stories of origin now (with mid-'80s DEC). The i18n.com
    > version does not date the MIT meeting, does it?

    It must be '89, when the X Window System Internationalization
    team at MIT got formed for X11R5 release, as what the article
    on i18n.com refers as, "a committee working on the standards for
    xwindows". (By the way, "xwindows" is incorrect, no plural please ;-)
    it should be written as X Window System :).
    The statement I posted earlier,

    hiura> The acronym "I18N" appeared before 1991, since I recall I have
    hiura> already used I18N in '89 ;-).

    was exactly refering to the use of "I18N" in the committee the article
    on i18n.com referring. As some of you may remember ;-), I was a part
    of this committee, so I know this committee was not the origin of the
    term I18N.

    We've created two mailing lists at MIT for the X Window System
    Internationalization activity, called mltalk(multilingual talk) and
    i18n-si (Internationalization sample implementation) back on those
    days.

    DEC was heavily involved in the development of X Window System
    since very early phase, I can imagine there were some idea exchanges
    on the naming, so it is possible that the rep. of DEC passed the
    hint to this committee.

    --
    hiura@{freestandards.org,OpenI18N.org,li18nux.org,unicode.org,sun.com} 
    Chair, Li18nux/Linux Internationalization Initiative,  http://www.li18nux.org
    Chair, OpenI18N/Open Internationalization Initiative, http://www.OpenI18N.org
    Board of Directors, Free Standards Group,	 http://www.freestandards.org
    Architect/Sr. Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems, Inc, USA   eFAX: 509-693-8356
    


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