Hideki, You are most likely right that I18N was used much earlier than I was able to witness. I entered the standards game in 1989 (X3/L2) and started with the POSIX activity sometime in 1991.
Thanks for remembering. Arnold -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 10:18 AM To: Winkler, Arnold F Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Historians- what is origin of i18n, l10n, etc.? > From: "Winkler, Arnold F" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sometime around 1991 in a IEEE P1003.1 (POSIX) meeting, Gary Miller (IBM) > was writing on the blackboard. After having spelled out > Internationalization a few times, he first abbreviated it to I--n and a bit > later (obviously after counting the letters in between) used I18N. Sandra > might have been at the meeting, and Keld - they might be able to confirm my > recollection. The acronym "I18N" appeared before 1991, since I recall I have already used I18N in '89 ;-). The beginning of this kind of acronym was S12N(Scherpenhuizen) at DEC, as far as on the record, as an email address for him on DEC VMS. By 1985, I18N became an acronym for Internationalization in the I18N team at DEC, by following this Scherpenhuizen's S12N convention. Among the standard organizations, the /usr/group (It became UniForum later) was the first one using I18N as an acronym for Internationalization, in '88. -- hiura@{freestandards.org,OpenI18N.org,li18nux.org,unicode.org,sun.com} Chair, Li18nux/Linux Internationalization Initiative, http://www.li18nux.org Board of Directors, Free Standards Group, http://www.freestandards.org Architect/Sr. Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems, Inc, USA eFAX: 509-693-8356
