[governance] Program for IGC at IGF

[Louis Pouzin]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:51:34 -0400, George Sadowsky wrote:

[..]
>Let's also stop accepting revisionist history as anything but an admission of ignorance or unwillingness to accept the truth.  Good examples of this are contained in the recent Linguistic Diversity workshop outline. As Stephane Bortzmeyer points out, and as those of us who have worked in ICT for quite a few years know, linguistic diversity has been an issue of active concern since at least the 1970's.  If workshops and other discussions are not based upon an accurate understanding of history and an accurate assessment of the nature of the problem and ongoing efforts to solve it, then their proceedings and conclusions will be ignored, and correctly so, as a silly waste of time by people who don't know any better.
[..]
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Hi George,

Can't you be more specific instead of resorting to insinuations. Let's recap history. My opinion on the progress of linguistic diversity in the internet is already on record:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/multilingual/papers/s9paper-pouzin.pdf
There is no need to restate it entirely here, a summary should do.

An early mail format (RFC733) was defined in 1977. It was ok, that is, for sending strictly ascii text. All commercial computers at this time featured 8-bit characters. Interestingly the internet format was based on 7-bit characters, thereby excluding non ascii alphabets, even though there were already ISO standards for some 8-bit alphabets.

But an RFC is not a magic wand, just a milestone. A revised format (RFC822) was defined in 1982, still keeping 7 bits. Several years passed before mailers and net infrastructure became available on an operational scale. Users, actually a happy few enjoying internet access, could exchange ascii text, no more.

Word processors at that time allowed to produce documents more or less in the user's own language. Stored files used 8-bit characters, but not the mail. Then users resorted to a flurry of freeware, such as BinHex, Stuffit, uuencode, to turn their documents into ascii and mail them. All that required a certain amount of manual hacking, and a minimum of technical skill, restricting the use of internet to computerese. Gradually the market became fragmented into a variety of incompatible proprietary mail packages.

How long did this situation last ? TWENTY years. There was no technical roadblock. It was just a matter of picking a standard replacing a battery of similar cottage tools.

Eventually, in 1991 the web was born. Not in the internet milieu, but as an internal CERN project. It was not intended for outside use. Somehow it spilled into Caltech, and from there invaded the net. Standardization in W3C was speedy and timely. Web users mushroomed, attracted by the interface simplicity. Not being computerese they needed friendly tools for exchanging documents. There was no more escape. Making a new mail standard had become unavoidable.

At last a mail format (RFC1521 et al) was defined in 1993. It allowed to attach binary files in mail. Its deployment took well till the end of the 90's. It was a substantial improvement indeed. But up until today users can only write their mail name in ascii, after 35 years of internet.

What else ? IDN, in 2003 ? This piece of history is just beginning.

Now, may I requote you George ?

>Let's also stop accepting revisionist history as anything but an admission of ignorance or unwillingness to accept the truth.

Do you think the unilateral control of the internet by a single english speaking country has been fair to other languages ?

Anyway, we have a lot of other important topics to study in the Linguistic Diversity workshop. Issues of alphabet formats are in ICANN turf.
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