Leisa Reichelt of disambiguity feels annoyed by US spelling such as “internationalization” versus “internationalisation” or “localization” versus “localisation.” I offered a geeky alternative: I18N and L10N. Don’t we all speak the language of numbers? Back in my enterprisey days at Oracle, we used I18N almost exclusively in our extensive written spec and design documents on the subject of making our software fit for global use. It never struck me funny, because as a programmer, I was familiar with many apparently cryptic shortcuts, like Hungarian notation.
Leisa, being more concerned with usability and aesthetics than I, was a bit shocked by these “numeronyms” and dug up some background on them. Fascinating stuff. Count me, A2e Z5a, in favor of numeronyms.
4 Comments
I was going to throw p13n (for personalization) from the portal world at Leisa, but thought I would let her recover from the others first…
p13n? that’s a good one.
It was interesting to me to see Leisa’s reaction, because I didn’t even flinch the first time I came across i18n. That reminded me how my own reactions aren’t necessarily the same as other people’s.
it’s taken me all day to work out the title of your blogpost!
perhaps I’m just not so good with numbers
i think i’m as much intrigued as horrified with my recent encounters with these numeronyms…
I don’t know, leisa, if someone else had done that to their name I probably would have taken a bunch of time to figure it out too! it’s sort of cool, though, made me feel like I was some cloned creature living in the far off future…