Mark Edward Davis (born September 13, 1952) is an American specialist in the

internationalization and localization In computing, internationalization and localization (American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities and ...

of software and the co-founder and president of the

Unicode Consortium The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...

. He is one of the key technical contributors to the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

specifications, being the primary author or co-author of bidirectional text algorithms (used worldwide to display

Arabic language Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

and

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

text), collation (used by sorting algorithms and search algorithms),

Unicode normalization Unicode equivalence is the specification by the Unicode character encoding standard that some sequences of code points represent essentially the same character. This feature was introduced in the standard to allow compatibility with preexisting st ...

Unicode scripts Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...

, text segmentation,

identifier An identifier is a name that identifies (that is, labels the identity of) either a unique object or a unique ''class'' of objects, where the "object" or class may be an idea, physical countable object (or class thereof), or physical noncountable ...

s, regular expressions, data compression,

character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...

and

security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social ...

Education

Davis was educated at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

where he was awarded a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

in 1979.

Career and research

Davis has specialized in

Internationalization and localization In computing, internationalization and localization (American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities and ...

of software for many years. After his PhD, he worked in Zurich,

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

for several years, then returned to California to join

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

, where he co-authored the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

KanjiTalk KanjiTalk was the name given by Apple to its Japanese language localization of the classic Mac OS. It consisted of translated applications, a set of Japanese fonts, and a Japanese input method called Kotoeri. The software was sold and supported onl ...

and Script Manager, and authored the Macintosh Arabic and Hebrew systems. He also worked on parts of the Mac OS, including contributions to the design of TrueType. Later, he was the manager and architect for the Taligent international frameworks and was then the architect for a large part of the

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

international libraries. At IBM, he was the Chief Software Globalization Architect. He is the author of a number of patents, primarily in

. At various times he has also managed groups or departments covering text, internationalization, operating system services, porting and technical communications. Davis founded and was responsible for the overall architecture of International Components for Unicode (ICU: a major Unicode software internationalization library) and designed the core of the Java internationalization classes. He also is the vice-chair of the Unicode

Common Locale Data Repository The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale-specific information that an operating syst ...

(CLDR) project, and is a co-author of Best Current Practice (BCP) 47 IETF language tag Request for Comments (RFC 4646 and RFC 5646), used for identifying languages in XML and HTML documents. Since the start of 2006, Davis has been working on software internationalization at Google, focusing on effective and secure use of

(especially in the index and search pipeline), overall improvement and adoption of the software internationalization libraries (including ICU) and the introduction and maintenance of stable identifiers for languages, scripts, regions, time zones and currencies.

Publications

''The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0''

Personal life

Davis is married to Anne Gundelfinger. He has two daughters from a previous marriage.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Mark 1952 births American computer programmers Apple Inc. employees Google employees Living people People involved with Unicode