Hi Tim. Good to hear from you and thanks for this. I agree, I went thru some of the same books . In fact, books written by people close to software internationalization probably rejected documenting "i18n" in their formal publications, which is why I think the first reference I have is "Soft landing in Japan". This book is more about getting into the Japan market and is not written by software people in particular. So documenting this "tidbit" was to help people on the outside be a bit more "in the know". Makes a strange kind of sense.
Perhaps this sense of letting outsiders in, helped influence later publications to start documenting it as well. Anyway, I will add Jan's first name to the article and your comments to the annotations. Best regards, Tex "Greenwood, Timothy" wrote: > > I concur with the stories from the other DEC folks and certainly remember Jan >Scherpenhuizen and S12N. > > Some idea of a lower date for common use of I18N are books that talk about >internationalization but do not use the abbreviation. It is not used in the July 1993 >X/Open Internationalisation Guide nor the summer 93 Digital Technical Journal on >Product Internationalization. Nor do I see it in the 1991 'Digital Guide to >Developing International Software'. This was based on an internally distributed DEC >manual - I believe that I have a copy at home. These dates tie in with the findings >from Tex. I suspect that the term was in internal use, but not considered as fit for >publication. The term internationalization itself is not used in my earliest >reference, proceedings from an internal DEC conference on International Opportunities >and Differences' April 1985. > > Tim -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:Tex@;XenCraft.com Xen Master http://www.i18nGuy.com XenCraft http://www.XenCraft.com Making e-Business Work Around the World -------------------------------------------------------------
