Michael Everson, Unicode fontographer

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Seen in Thursday's NY Times:

FOR THE WORLD'S A B C'S, HE MAKES 1'S AND 0'S
=============================================

By Michael Erard

September 25, 2003

MICHAEL EVERSON, a 40-year-old typographer who lives in Dublin,
considers himself blessed because he has found his life's work: to be an
alphabetician to all the peoples of the world. Mr. Everson's largest
project to date - a contribution to a new version of Unicode 4.0, an
international standard for computerizing text - is cementing his reputation.

His mission has taken him to Kabul, Afghanistan, and Helsinki, Finland;
to Beijing, Tokyo and Redmond, Wash. His Dublin house is a shrine to his
obsession with every writing system that humans are known to have
created - 148 of which Mr. Everson says he can use for writing his name.
In the hallway is an icon of the saints Cyril and Methodius (Cyril is
often credited with inventing the Cyrillic alphabet) and a page from a
Maghreb manuscript from North Africa.

He keeps a photo of a stone inscribed with ogham, an ancient Irish
alphabet that looks like hash marks, in a silver frame. His office
chair, parked in front of a Macintosh G4 laptop named Cyril, is
upholstered with dark blue fabric dotted with Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Surrounding his desk are shelves heavy with books on the origins of
cuneiform and other writing systems.

He remains fond of the Roman alphabet, however. "Of all the alphabets,
it's the best one," he said in a telephone interview.

For the last 10 years, Mr. Everson, who has American and Irish
citizenship, has played a crucial role in developing Unicode, ...

Read the rest at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/technology/circuits/25code.html>
or the printer-friendly version at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/technology/circuits/25code.html?pagewanted=print>

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--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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