Marco Cimarosti <marco dot cimarosti at essetre dot it> wrote: > I suggest that the 400-odd property and value name be listed in a > text file on the Unicode FTP site (with each English term well > commented and explained) and translations be collected on a voluntary > basis has was done for the "What's Unicode?" text. The copyright on > this material should grant free and unrestricted usage to any > implementation such as ICU.
Microsoft has done this on a few occasions for Windows terminology. There was a book in 1993 called "The GUI Guide" which included translations for about 450 common terms and menu items used in Windows, such as "combo box" and "Match Whole Word Only." Similar lists have been published in other Microsoft books, such as "The Microsoft Guide to User Interface" (but not, I believe, in its successor, "The Windows User Experience"). Obviously Microsoft's intent is that, if it's important for these terms to be clearly defined and distinguished in English, it's important in other languages as well. This is equally true for Unicode, which, as Marco said, uses many common words such as "character" and "case" in very specific ways. I agree that a multilingual Unicode glossary should be assembled (possibly as a volunteer project) and officially endorsed by the Unicode Consortium, so users and vendors will be on common terminological ground. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
