Joe Becker (Unicode): Difference between revisions

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{{short description|American computer scientist}}

{{Other uses|Joe Becker (disambiguation){{!}}Joe Becker}}

{{Infobox person

'''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 Technologies|BBN]] and multilingual workstation software at [[Xerox]]. He speaks survival-level [[Mandarin Chinese]], [[French language|French]], [[German language|German]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], and [[Russian language|Russian]] as well as English.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.unicodeconference.org/review-committee.htm |archive-url=https://archive.is/uaAWu |archive-date=April 16, 2013 |quote=Joe Becker is one of the founders of the Unicode Standard effort, 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 Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Russian, and has forgotten Latin. |publisher=Object Management Group |title=Program Review Committee}}</ref> His [[Erdős number]] is 2.{{cn|date=February 2018}}

| name = Joe Becker

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| birth_name = Joseph D. Becker

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| nationality = American

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| occupation = Technical Vice President

| years_active = 1980s-present

| known_for = Co-founder of [[Unicode Consortium]]

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}}

'''Joseph D. Becker''' is an American computer scientist and one of the co-founders of the [[Unicode]] project, and a Technical Vice President Emeritus of the [[Unicode Consortium]]. He has worked on artificial intelligence at [[BBN Technologies|BBN]] and multilingual workstation software at [[Xerox]].

Becker has long been involved in the issues of multilingual computing in general and Unicode in particular. His 1984 paper in ''[[Scientific American]]'', "[http://www.jstor.org/stable/24969416 Multilingual Word Processing]", was a seminal work on some of the problems involved, including the need to distinguish [[Character (computing)|characters]] and [[glyph]]s.<ref>http://www.sil.org/computing/routledge/simons/multilingual.html</ref> In 1987, Becker (then at Xerox), together with [[Lee Collins (Unicode)|Lee Collins]] (also at Xerox) and [[Mark Davis (Unicode)|Mark Davis]] of [[Apple Inc.|Apple]] began investigations into the practicality of creating a universal character set.<ref name="Gardner2009">{{cite book|author=Scott Gardner|title=The Definitive Guide to Pylons|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TkEnCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA218|date=25 January 2009|publisher=Apress|isbn=978-1-4302-0534-0|page=218 |quote=The origins of Unicode date back to 1987 when Joe Becker, Lee Collins, and Mark Davis started investigating the practicalities of creating a universal character set.}}</ref><ref>[http://www.unicode.org/history/summary.html Summary Narrative of the History of Unicode]</ref> It was Becker who coined the word "Unicode" to cover the project.<ref>http://unicode.org/history/earlyyears.html</ref> His article ''[[Unicode 88]]'',<ref name="Becker_1988_Unicode"/> contained the first public summary of the principles originally underlying the Unicode standard.

Becker has long been involved in the issues of multilingual computing in general and Unicode in particular. His 1984 paper in ''[[Scientific American]]'', "[http://www.jstor.org/stable/24969416 Multilingual Word Processing]",<ref>{{cite journal |title=Multilingual Word Processing |journal=Scientific American|jstor=24969416 |last1=d. Becker |first1=Joseph |year=1984 |volume=251 |issue=1 |pages=96–107 |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0784-96 |bibcode=1984SciAm.251a..96B }}</ref> was a seminal work on some of the problems involved, including the need to distinguish [[Character (computing)|characters]] and [[glyph]]s.<ref>{{cite book|title=Using Computers in Linguistics: A Practical Guide|editor1=Helen Aristar Dry|editor2=John Lawler|isbn=978-0415167932|chapter=The Nature of Linguistic Data and the Requirements of a Computing Environment for Linguistic Research|chapter-url=http://www.sil.org/computing/routledge/simons/multilingual.html|author=Gary F. Simons|year=1998|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/usingcomputersin00john}}</ref> InFollowing the release of the paper in 1987, Beckerhe (thenand attwo Xerox),others togetherbegan investigations into the practicality of creating a universal character set. Becker teamed up with his colleague [[Lee Collins (Unicode)|Lee Collins]] (alsowho worked alongside him at [[Xerox)]] and [[Mark Davis (Unicode)|Mark Davis]] of [[Apple Inc.|Apple]] began investigations into the practicality of creating a universal character set.<ref name="Gardner2009">{{cite book|author=Scott Gardner|title=The Definitive Guide to Pylons|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TkEnCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA218|date=25 January 2009|publisher=Apress|isbn=978-1-4302-0534-0|page=218 |quote=The origins of Unicode date back to 1987 when Joe Becker, Lee Collins, and Mark Davis started investigating the practicalities of creating a universal character set.}}</ref><ref>[http{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/history/summary.html |title=Summary Narrative of the |work=History of Unicode]}}</ref> It was Becker who coined the word "Unicode" to cover the project.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://unicode.org/history/earlyyears.html|title=Early Years of Unicode|work=History of Unicode}}</ref> His article ''[[Unicode 88]]'',<ref name="Becker_1988_Unicode"/> contained the first public summary of the principles originally underlying the Unicode standard.<ref name="Becker_1988_Unicode"/>

==References==

{{reflist|refs=

<ref name="Becker_1988_Unicode">{{Cite web |url=http://unicode.org/history/unicode88.pdf |title=Unicode 88 |author-last=Becker |author-first=Joseph D. |author-link=Joseph D. Becker |date=1998-09-10 |orig-year=1988-08-29 |edition=10th anniversary reprint |website=unicode.org |publisher=[[Unicode Consortium]] |access-date=2016-10-25 |dead-url-status=nolive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161125224409/http://unicode.org/history/unicode88.pdf |archive-date=2016-11-25 |quote=In 1978, the initial proposal for a set of "Universal Signs" was made by [[Bob Belleville]] at [[Xerox PARC]]. Many persons contributed ideas to the development of a new encoding design. Beginning in 1980, these efforts evolved into the Xerox Character Code Standard (XCCS) by the present author, a multilingual encoding which has been maintained by Xerox as an internal corporate standard since 1982, through the efforts of Ed Smura, Ron Pellar, and others.<br/>Unicode arose as the result of eight years of working experience with XCCS. Its fundamental differences from XCCS were proposed by Peter Fenwick and Dave Opstad (pure 16-bit codes), and by [[Lee Collins (Unicode)|Lee Collins]] (ideographic character unification). Unicode retains the many features of XCCS whose utility have been proved over the years in an international line of communication multilingual system products.}}</ref>

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[[Category:Living people]]

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