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]]. His [[Erdős number]] is 2.{{cn|date=February 2018}}

| name = Joe Becker

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| birth_name = Joseph D. Becker

| birth_date = <!-- {{Birth date and age|YYYY|MM|DD}} for living people supply only the year with {{Birth year and age|YYYY}} unless the exact date is already widely published, as per [[WP:DOB]]. For people who have died, use {{Birth date|YYYY|MM|DD}}. -->

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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 ana Technical OfficerVice President Emeritus of the [[Unicode Consortium]]. He has worked on artificial intelligence at [[BBN Technologies|BBN]] and multilingual workstation software at [[Xerox]]. His [[Erdős number]] is 2.{{cn|date=February 2018}}

Becker has long been involved in the issues of multilingual computing in general and Unicode in particular. His 1984 paper in ''[[Scientific American]]'', "[https://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>{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/history/summary.html|title=Summary|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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