Joe Becker (Unicode)
Encyclopedia
Joseph D. Becker is one of the co-founders of the Unicode
project, and an Officer Emeritus of the Unicode Consortium
. He has worked on artificial intelligence at BBN
and multilingual workstation software at Xerox
. He speaks survival-level Mandarin Chinese, French
, German
, Japanese
, and Russian
as well as English.
Becker has long been involved in the issues of multilingual computing in general and Unicode in particular. His 1984 paper in Scientific American
, "Multilingual Word Processing", was a seminal work on some of the problems involved, including the need to distinguish characters
and glyph
s.
In 1987, Becker (then at Xerox), together with Lee Collins (also at Xerox) and Mark Davis
of Apple began investigations into the practicality of creating a universal character set. It was Becker who coined the word "Unicode" to cover the project. His article, Unicode 88, contained the first public summary of the principles originally underlying the Unicode standard.
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
project, and an Officer Emeritus of the Unicode Consortium
Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization that coordinates the development of the Unicode standard. Its stated goal is to eventually replace existing character encoding schemes with Unicode and its standard Unicode Transformation Format schemes, claiming that many of the existing...
. He has worked on artificial intelligence at BBN
BBN Technologies
BBN Technologies is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
and multilingual workstation software at Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
. He speaks survival-level Mandarin Chinese, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
as well as English.
Becker has long been involved in the issues of multilingual computing in general and Unicode in particular. His 1984 paper in Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
, "Multilingual Word Processing", was a seminal work on some of the problems involved, including the need to distinguish characters
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....
and glyph
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s.
In 1987, Becker (then at Xerox), together with Lee Collins (also at Xerox) and Mark Davis
Mark Davis (Unicode)
Dr. Mark E. Davis is a co-founder of Unicode, Inc registered in the State of California, U.S.A. on 4th January 1991, and has been leading the company since then as the president that started Unicode project....
of Apple began investigations into the practicality of creating a universal character set. It was Becker who coined the word "Unicode" to cover the project. His article, Unicode 88, contained the first public summary of the principles originally underlying the Unicode standard.