[HN Gopher] Origin Of The Abbreviation I18n: Jan Scherpenhuizen ...
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Origin Of The Abbreviation I18n: Jan Scherpenhuizen => S12n @ DEC
(2002)
Author : DonHopkins
Score : 29 points
Date : 2023-04-19 09:07 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.i18nguy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.i18nguy.com)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| In the Unix Haters X-Windows Disaster chapter I bullshat a joke
| about the horribly complex ICCCM manual ("Inter-Client
| Communication Conventions Manual") being called "I39L", which was
| just meant to make fun of how ridiculously long its name was
| (which should warn you about its complexity), but I had actually
| heard other people call it "Ice Cubed" before (the lethal
| weapon!), so I wasn't making that part up. But somebody took my
| bullshit joke at face value, and put the X-Windows Disaster
| chapter as a citation in the ICCCM wikipedia page! And also a
| redirect from "Ice Cubed" to "Inter-Client Communication
| Conventions Manual".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Client_Communication_Con...
|
| >In computing, the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual
| (ICCCM or I39L short for "I", 39 letters and "L")[1] is a
| standard protocol for the X Window System. It specifies
| conventions for clients of a common X server about selections and
| cut buffers, communication with the window manager and session
| manager, manipulation of shared resources, and color
| characterization.
|
| [2] The X-Windows Disaster chapter of the Unix-Haters Handbook:
| http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disast...
|
| >Ice Cube: The Lethal Weapon
|
| >One of the fundamental design goals of X was to separate the
| window manager from the window server. "Mechanism, not policy"
| was the mantra. That is, the X server provided a mechanism for
| drawing on the screen and managing windows, but did not implement
| a particular policy for human-computer interaction. While this
| might have seemed like a good idea at the time (especially if you
| are in a research community, experimenting with different
| approaches for solving the human-computer interaction problem),
| it can create a veritable user interface Tower of Babel.
|
| >If you sit down at a friend's Macintosh, with its single mouse
| button, you can use it with no problems. If you sit down at a
| friend's Windows box, with two buttons, you can use it, again
| with no problems. But just try making sense of a friend's X
| terminal: three buttons, each one programmed a different way to
| perform a different function on each different day of the week --
| and that's before you consider combinations like control-left-
| button, shift-right-button, control-shift-meta-middle-button, and
| so on. Things are not much better from the programmer's point of
| view.
|
| >As a result, one of the most amazing pieces of literature to
| come out of the X Consortium is the "Inter Client Communication
| Conventions Manual," more fondly known as the "ICCCM", "Ice
| Cubed," or "I39L" (short for "I, 39 letters, L"). It describes
| protocols that X clients ust use to communicate with each other
| via the X server, including diverse topics like window
| management, selections, keyboard and colormap focus, and session
| management. In short, it tries to cover everything the X
| designers forgot and tries to fix everything they got wrong. But
| it was too late -- by the time ICCCM was published, people were
| already writing window managers and toolkits, so each new version
| of the ICCCM was forced to bend over backwards to be backward
| compatible with the mistakes of the past.
|
| >The ICCCM is unbelievably dense, it must be followed to the last
| letter, and it still doesn't work. ICCCM compliance is one of the
| most complex ordeals of implementing X toolkits, window managers,
| and even simple applications. It's so difficult, that many of the
| benefits just aren't worth the hassle of compliance. And when one
| program doesn't comply, it screws up other programs. This is the
| reason cut-and-paste never works properly with X (unless you are
| cutting and pasting straight ASCII text), drag-and-drop locks up
| the system, colormaps flash wildly and are never installed at the
| right time, keyboard focus lags behind the cursor, keys go to the
| wrong window, and deleting a popup window can quit the whole
| application. If you want to write an interoperable ICCCM
| compliant application, you have to crossbar test it with every
| other application, and with all possible window managers, and
| then plead with the vendors to fix their problems in the next
| release.
|
| >In summary, ICCCM is a technological disaster: a toxic waste
| dump of broken protocols, backward compatibility nightmares,
| complex nonsolutions to obsolete nonproblems, a twisted mass of
| scabs and scar tissue intended to cover up the moral and
| intellectual depravity of the industry's standard naked emperor.
|
| >Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of
| mashed potatoes. - Jamie Zawinski
| jmount wrote:
| Always hated that abbreviation. I feel the disrespect to the
| reader in being unwilling to write out a word (instead of an
| acronym) really makes one wonder about actual commitment to
| communication. I mean why translate if one can just use
| gibberish?
| copperx wrote:
| It's a matter of taste, and I find it horrible. It's also hard
| to type, compared to just letters.
|
| I get it that internationalization is too long, but what was so
| wrong with using intl or something similar?
| stkdump wrote:
| I don't know. I am not a native speaker, but I think it is ok,
| maybe even better. We have gotten used to 'OK', despite its
| questionable origin (or origin story).
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Agreed, and I also hate a11y for "accessibility" as I think it
| is quite inaccessible when you first come across it and really
| it only exists because the writer can't remember the number of
| c and s letters.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| And the shorter the words, the bigger a F2K Y1U it is to the
| reader.
| soneca wrote:
| Can someone please explain to me why "411" means "information"?
| surteen wrote:
| In the US, this was the standard phone number to dial to
| connect to an operator-assisted (and later automated)
| information lookup, such as "get me the number of so-and-so in
| such-and-such city and state".
|
| Personally I haven't needed to use it since probably the 1990s.
| brookst wrote:
| Expanding, US phone numbers are xxx-yyy-zzzz, where x is area
| code, y is prefix, and z is number.
|
| It used to be that you did not have to dial the area code if
| you were calling a number in your same area code. So if your
| phone number was 415-591-0726 and you were calling
| 415-327-0914, you could omit the "415" part.
|
| The prefixes ?11 were reserved: 911 for emergency, 411 for
| directory information, 611 for telephone company support, 711
| for TDD / relay for the deaf, then 511 for road conditions I
| think, and then 811 for "call before you dig", aka please
| don't backhoe our fiber optics.
| obventio56 wrote:
| Was this the first example of this style of abbreviation? Was
| a16z consciously inspired by I18n?
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Origin of the Abbreviation 'i18n'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21634535 - Nov 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _Origin Of The Abbreviation I18n For "Internationalization"_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5235071 - Feb 2013 (14
| comments)
| [deleted]
| ajnin wrote:
| I think the French k7 is because "k-sept" sounds exactly like
| "cassette". The fact that the number of letters match is just a
| coincidence.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| My "favourite" one of those weird abbreviations is a11y, because
| rather ironically it's bad for screen readers.
| tough wrote:
| I read it as ally tho
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