Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Yes.  Every word can be compressed to the form I1N in a finite
    number of iterations, where I represents the initial letter, and
    N represents the N'th letter.  Naturally, 1 represents 1's self.
    
    
    (For example:  "in" -> I0N -> I1N;
                   "a"  -> a-1a -> a2a -> a1a)

    Alphanumic

A diginym.

    Or Acronumber
                                            - Rik -

	A butcherization (B12N)

    Being the old-fashioned type, I prefer an acronym: APITA
    
    Is there some point to this form of representation of a word? 
    Where did it come from?  Does it have some use that I haven't
    learned yet?  
    
    --bonnie

    sounds like a good notation for crossword puzzle fanatics.
    

    Re .6
    
    I think that the justification is that it's easier for Product Managers
    to type.
    
    Re .0 etc
    
    I like _diginym_ though purists might object on the grounds that
    (like `television') it derives half from Latin and half from Greek
    (though the halves are the other way round).
    
    b

    Its usefulness?  Simple -- it's easier to correctly "spell" I18N.
    
    It also avoids the difficulties presently by the choices between
    Internationalisation (UK) and Internationalization (US).
    
    					andrew

  Back in 1986 or so, when I was working in the area of internationalization,
  I attended a DEC symposium on the subject.  One of the speakers was
  Jan Scherpenhuizen, an expert and long-time laborer in the I18N fields.
  He said that he had often referred to himself as Jan S12N because people
  outside of the Netherlands had a terrible time spelling his name.

  Anyway, his was the first use I saw of "I18N" -- anyone have a prior
  claim?

  JP

RE -1

>  He said that he had often referred to himself as Jan S12N because people
>  outside of the Netherlands had a terrible time spelling his name.

>  Anyway, his was the first use I saw of "I18N" -- anyone have a prior
>  claim?

No. ;-) I support this one. Jan was the first here in Europe.

Arie

  I like diginym, too.  One that has been popping up recently is
  I14Y for "interoperability."
 
  JP

Another vote for S12N was first, and coined I18N, thus introducing a new form
of abbreviation. As it is a singularly DEC style of acronym I think we should
call it a DECronym.

Steve

Personally, I like Liron's suggestion (.5) 'butcherization'.

But I'll start calling it a diginym (D5M).  

If nothing else got accomplished, we've documented the origin of the
beast.

Dave C.

Not only is 'i18n' easier to spell than 'internationali[sz]ation', it's a
lot easier to *say* as well. However, misspellings are not precluded: for
'localization' (l10n), I've seen everything from 'l9n' to 'l14n'!! Another
one that never really caught on was 'i11l' for 'international'. It never
caught on because the full form is easier to say!

Ian

    an abomination.

    While I have great respect for Jan S12N, I suggest that I18N is 
    insufficiently gemutlich for Digital's purposes.

    It is unweildly in the mouth, taking almost as many  twists of the
    tongue and grimaces to pronounce as internationalization.

    It raises profound questions of capitalization. Is I18N a proper noun
    requiring the uppercase treatment?   Or is i18n of a humbler sort
    despite its origin?

    Therefore, I propose simplification. Twenty (or 20) makes a wonderfully
    simple way to describe internationalization.  It is easy on the mouth. 
    One does not develop oddly-shaped wrinkles from pronouncing 20 too
    frequently. 

    Twenty already possesses firm rules for capitalization and when to
    render it as a word or as a numeral.  Twenty is easily spelled out and
    even more easily written as a numeral.  In all languages that I can
    think of, 20 is an easy number to write (unlike 30 or even 100).  Were 
    we to re-adopt Latin as the lingua franca, the internationalization
    effort would be as sweet as two kisses.

    Why, there are a score of reasons why 20 best sums up 
    internationalization.

       :^)   :^)   :^)   Margaret

re .18

>                                                                     Were 
>   we to re-adopt Latin as the lingua franca, the internationalization
>   effort would be as sweet as two kisses.

Or as satisfying as a bottle of beer.

Dave C.

    G'day,
    
    
     Do you mean that internationalization or internationalisation will now
    be known as IXXn?
    
    derek ;-)

    No one may have noticed, but CONTRACTION (C9N) and COMPRESSION (C9N)
    are DIGINYMOUS (D8S) or should that be HOMODIGINYMOUS (H12S)?
    
    Wook

    
    > or should that be HOMODIGINYMOUS (H12S)?
    
    I don't know, homodiginymity sounds syndiginymful to me.

    Note that in Hong Kong we pronounce "I18n" as "I" "subbat" "N" where
    "subbat" is Cantonese for the number "eighteen."  This is consistent
    with the established practice of pronouncing DEC model numbers by
    saying the English letters in English, and the numeric part in Chinese.
    
    Regardless of your opinion of "I18n" as a diginym, I think this one is
    particularly appropriate.
    
    --Simon
    

    There's a username "ATOZ" on a cluster nearby.  The guy's name starts
    with "A" and ends with "Z" with a string of letters in between.
    
    --Simon
    

I hope they don't productize him.  :-)

    Speaking of Jan S12n, I came across him in a distribution list today.
    You can look him up in ELF using: find/username=s12n
    
    --Simon

	Why don't we honor Jan by calling them scherpenhuizens, or
	S12Ns?

		-- C3F

>	Why don't we honor Jan by calling them scherpenhuizens, 
    
    Why not?  (except it's a mouthful) 
    
    And if we do, then I suppose that words that collapse into the same 
    scherpenhuizen [ref. reply .21] (or would that be "scherpenhuizeneme"?)
    would be called alloscherps (cf. allophones, allomorphs).
    
    --Simon
    

	And the study of scherpenhuizens would be scherpenhuizenology 
	(S17Y) or, better yet, scherpenhuizenistics (S18S).

	DECese would be a scherpenhuizenizing (S17G) language.

	Terms like S17Y, S18S, and S18S would be metascherpenhuizens
	(M17Ns).

	The possibilities are endless,

		-- C

Okay.  Here's a new twist:

What should we call the style of writing in which a word is written out
and followed immediately by its {diginym|scherpenhuizen representation}
within parentheses (P9S); e.g., the word and parenthetical symbol
immediately before the preceding semicolon?

Perhaps enscherpenhuizenography (E21Y).

Dave C.

    Are there any homodiginyms?  or onomatodiginyms?  That is, diginyms
    that LOOK the way the SOUND.  A couple that almost work are stew (s2w)
    and won (w1n).  Oh, maybe one (o1e) and three (t3e) too (t2o ... no). 

    There must be more.   (That is to say "there's PROBABLY more"; _NOT_
    "there SHALL be more!".   Oh, never mind.)

re .32

Not won (w1n); win (w1n).  (Can these be set in lower case?)

Six (s1x).   (Any 3-letter word having 'i' as the middle letter; e.g. P1G.)

To (t0o).

Dave C.

    R0e .*:
    M3e w0e s4d d0o *a1l* o1r w5g t2s w1y. T2n w0e w3d o2y h2e t0o l3n
    t3e-l4r w3s.
    
    >M2k
    (t9n o0n r6t)

B1t t2n w0e w3d n2d a s4m f1r r7g a9s.

e.g. b1.1t = "bat"
     b1.2t = "bet"
     b1.3t = "bit"
     b1.4t = "but"

P4y s2n i0t w3d g1t _v2y_ c5x!  B1.4t i0t w3d e7e a l1t o0f s6g e4s!

C2y
<translation follows>


But then we would need a system for resolving amgiguities.

 		. . .

Pretty soon it would get _very_ complex!  But it would eliminate a lot of 
spelling errors.

Clay

ATOZ is a preponym.
A-Z is a hyphenym.

Notice that for ATOZ, the preponym and the diginym|scherpenhuizen of the 
preponym are pronounced identically.  The corresponding diginym to ATOZ 
is A24Z, so the second degree diginym is identical to the digipreponym.

I just read that out loud and now my mouth hurts! ;-)

Wook

    I gave up trying to read it when my brain started to hurt.
    
    --bonnie

    before = b4e