by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/12/20 10:16 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/12/20/6810031.aspx
Recent announcement over on the Unicode List and other places:
To better support students with an interest in internationalization, localization, and the support of natural languages in software, the Unicode Consortium introduced a new level of membership for students, enabling them to have full access to documentation, email lists, and technical discussions on questions of supporting writing systems and languages in software algorithms and protocols.
For more information see http://www.unicode.org/consortium/levels.html#student.
To join as a student, see http://www.unicode.org/consortium/joinform.html.
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Magda Danish
Sr. Administrative Director
The Unicode Consortium
The info about the levels is:
Students can also join the Unicode Consortium to have full access to documentation, email lists and technical meetings and learn about the development process of the Unicode Standard and other Unicode technical publications. A valid student ID is required to join at this level.
The price? Just $50 -- ⅓ of the next least expensive type of membership....
Very cool!
I wonder if I could organize a field trip from a local high school or university to the next UTC? :-)
This post brought to you by ⅓ (U+2153, aka VULGAR FRACTION ONE THIRD)
Pavanaja U B on 21 Dec 2007 9:58 PM:
One of the pending requests from countries like India, Sri Lanka, etc. is that Unicode consortium should have a discounted membership fee for these countries. The current fee of $15000 is not affordable for individuals. The Govt of India is a member in Unicode consortium. But they never do these things -discuss with experts, send comments to UTC, participate in UTC meetings, etc. If at all they send some person for the meeting, invariably it will be some bureaucrat who do not know all the issues. Our opinions are not heard by UTC.
-Pavanaja
Michael S. Kaplan on 21 Dec 2007 10:35 PM:
Actually, memberships exist now for institutional/countries -- they were added within the last year.
But the consortium, while being a non-profit, relies on membership fees to support its work -- and in the end one has to pay to play, therefore. But the people who do the work and write proposals do make huge efforts to work with people in country....