The International Macintosh Users Group presents:

International Features of GMail

Group: International Macintosh Users Group (IMUG)
(A Forum for Multilingual / Multiscript Computing)
Date: January 19, 2006, 7-9 p.m.
Speaker: Katsuhiko Momoi (Testing Services I18n Consultant, Google)
Topic: International Features of Gmail
Location: Apple Computer, Apple Campus, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino
Take Saratoga/Sunnyvale exit off 280, turn South into
Cupertino, turn left onto Mariani Avenue, left into
Infinite Loop. Meeting is held in the Singapore Room.
Admission: $4, free for IMUG members
Contact: Roger Sherman, (650) 859-5981
roger [dot] sherman [at] sri [dot] com

"How is webmail different from standalone mail programs? What sort of
mail standards webmail needs to support? What are international
challenges webmail must address? This talk introduces GMail and its
unique features focusing on international features and support that
GMail has been implementing since its international debut in April, 2005.

International Mail presents interesting problems and challenges to
developers and testers. The basic requirements consist of sending
correctly formatted messages in various languages and correctly
displaying messages from a variety of mail programs in different
languages. But supporting these basic functions is by no means an easy
task. In sending messages, we must address the issue of compatibility
with other webmail services and standalone mail programs. In receiving
messages, we must be generous enough to support variations in formats
and yet at the same time stay within the bounds of mail standards.

There is also an issue of supporting local standards while promoting
international standards. This is particularly true in supporting various
mail encoding standards in use around the globe. Is there a single
standard for each language/script? The answer is not an easy one and
standards may be shifting or may not exist. In the meantime, mail has
emerged as the key software in web based communication. GMail offers
enriched features and conveniences to its users. Challenges are many but
webmail promises to be an exciting tool for communication."

Kat Momoi began his career in the software industry as an
Internationalization Evangelist at Netscape Communications in 1996. He
then continued his work at Netscape/AOL as Internationalization QA,
Technology Evangelist for Web Standards, Developer Support Engineer for
Mozilla Technologies and finally again as Internationalization
Evangelist. In 2005, he joined Google's Testing Services group. He is
currently acting as i18n consultant and test lead for various
international projects at Google. His publications include Browser
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/uidocs/browsercharmenu.html> and
Editor <http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/uidocs/editorcharmenu.html>
Encoding Menu specifications for the Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird
projects, "A Composite Approach to Language and Encoding Detection
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/UniversalCharsetDetection.html>"
(co-author with Shanjian Li), "International Features of New Netscape 6
Browser
<http://wp.netscape.com/eng/intl/docs/iuc17/browser/iuc17browser.html>",
"International Features of New Netscape 6 Mail
<http://wp.netscape.com/eng/intl/docs/iuc17/mail/iuc17mail.html>"
(co-author with Naoki Hotta), "Web Standards and Mozilla/Netscape 6:
State of W3C Standards in Japan & China
<http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc22/a375.html>", "History of IDN Support
in Mozilla (in Japanese)
<http://jdna.jp/event/030425-speech/presentations/mozilla-idnsupport.pdf>"
(with Naoki Hotta and Darin Fisher) among others.

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