July 22, 2010 7:00 PM - 45 attended
ICU & CLDR: i18n Building Blocks for Unicode & Globalization Support
Please note that this event is not on our usual 3rd Thursday: it's on the 4th Thursday this month.
The International Components for Unicode library, or ICU, is an open-source library in C, C++ and Java which provides a full range of services for Unicode enablement, and is the globalization foundation used by many software packages and operating systems, from mobile phones like iPhone or Android all the way up to mainframes and cloud server farms.
The Common Locale Data Repository, or CLDR, is a project sponsored by the Unicode Consortium for the exchange of language and locale information used in application development, and to gather, store, and make such data publicly available. By pooling resources, the time and expense of collecting good data is minimized, and language groups have an avenue to get their data into implementations such as ICU.
This talk will discuss these two foundational projects which form the basis of internationalization for the Mac as well as many other operating systems and products, and demonstrate the multilingual support in related offerings from IBM.
Steven R. Loomis is a member of the Globalization Center of Competency at IBM San Jose, where he is the Technical Lead for the International Components for Unicode for C/C++ (ICU4C). His ICU contributions include the Locale Explorer demo and the CLDR Survey Tool. After discovering the world of internationalization during a temporary assignment to a bidirectional text project, he joined the ICU team in 1998. His hobbies include Maltese language advocacy.
Net-Translators will sponsor refreshments for this event! Many thanks to Shy Avni for making this happen. Net-Translators is a leading translation and localization company offering services in over 60 languages to software, hardware, and medical device companies around the world. Services include localization of software products including GUIs and online Help, translation of technical and marketing materials, and full website globalization. Net-Translators specializes in translation of materials for compliance to international regulations and works hand-in hand with Multilingual QA to provide robust multilingual testing for joint clients.
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Adobe Systems will host this event in downtown San Jose. Many thanks to Ken Lunde and Mihai Nita for making this happen! Click here for details on getting to IMUG events at Adobe:
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Steven R. Loomis
Salvatore: I would like to know what sort/level of information you were looking for in regards ICU/CLDR. We tried to provide ample time for audience Q&A to find out what sorts of information we needed to go into. Especially given some of the detailed questions, I thought that this goal was fulfilled and I am sorry to find out that this was not met. With regards to Lotus we wanted to anchor the underlying technologies in how they are actually used in the field.
Posted July 26, 2010 at 2:55 PM -
tex
I agree with Daniel. The introductions help the speaker know the audience, and it helps everyone to have context when questions are asked, since you know a little bit about where they are coming from. If we go through it quickly, I don't think it is a problem.
As for Lotus, if Jacques had said more about i18n and use of ICU it would have been fine. But all he did was go thru product features and frankly the features were uninteresting as we have seen all of them in other products.
Posted July 27, 2010 at 2:58 AM -
Ken Lunde
With regard to introductions, there is a happy "middle ground" somewhere, at least in my opinion and experience. As Tex wrote, audience introductions can help the "speaker," so doing so could be made at the discretion of the speaker. Some speakers want or need audience introductions, and other speakers may simply prefer to pose a question or two to get a show of hands.
Posted July 27, 2010 at 5:52 AM -
Talia Baruch
Since most/all iMUG attendees are g11n industry professionals, I believe we look for more in-depth, plunge-in, roll-sleeve presentations, rather than high-level overviews. Namely for a key topic such as ICU. I appreciate Steven and Jacques' time and effort in bringing i18n up on the podium! Moving fwd, it would be great to dig in and spread out the multitude of knowledge we cumulatively share in the broad spectrum of globalization. Intro's-wise, I'm game. Too bad I'm always late for my queue ;-)
Posted July 27, 2010 at 10:37 AM -
Steven R. Loomis
The audience introductions were were helpful to me in trying to get an idea for the audience. At the Unicode conference it is not unusual to have four hours total to cover these same. Perhaps if there is interest in specific in depth topics those could be covered in a future meeting. I had intended this as more of an overview presentation.
Posted July 27, 2010 at 10:56 AM
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Joe KatzIMUG's volunteer marketeerSalvo's got a point: audience introductions are a longstanding IMUG tradition but maybe when we get above a certain number of attendees we should at least limit it to name-title-comChecked-in
pany and nothing long-winded (guilty as charged :-) or just ask for a show of hands for types of specialties represented. We can save detailed intros for our annual holiday party roundtable. As for this last event, I agree the poor salesguy didn't know what he was walking into & Steven could have done this solo. Note that at IUC34 Steven will be on a CLDR panel with a senior i18n architect from Google.
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Salvatore GiammarresiI was very disappointed. My expectation was to get information on ICU and CLDR beyond what I can find on their websites. I don't feel that is what I got. Dedicating half of the presentation to a demo of Lotus was a waste of my time. My recommendations:
1) We invite people that talk about topics in a way that is interesting and valuable to GILT professionals and assume that there is a minimum level of knowledge in our group.
2) We don't spend time introducing ourselves at the start of every meetup instead we use the first full hour to hear the speaker and ask questions (in a open forum format that we seem to enjoy) and then we spend the second hour socializing (that is where the real interesting discoveries and discussions occur in smaller groups) before we are kicked out and we need to head home after a long day of work.
What do you think?
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A former member
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A former member
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Joe:
I believe the audience introductions are an integral part of IMUG meetings; there are many advantages including networking and, maybe the most important, this helps the speaker to know his/her audience better before he/she starts.
WRT the presentation itself: as the leader of two program committees, I know how difficult it is to satisfy everyone all the time.