John Woldemar Cowan is an American

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

known for work with

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

and

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 ...

. Cowan is an alumnus member 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 ...

and was an editor of the XML 1.1 specification. He is also the founder of the

ConScript Unicode Registry The ConScript Unicode Registry is a discontinued volunteer project to coordinate the assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Areas (PUA) for the encoding of artificial scripts including those for constructed languages. It was founded by ...

, which is maintained by him and

Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006. His ...

. He is currently the chair of the working group defining the R7RS Large standard of the

Scheme A scheme is a systematic plan for the implementation of a certain idea. Scheme or schemer may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''The Scheme'' (TV series), a BBC Scotland documentary series * The Scheme (band), an English pop band * ''The Schem ...

programming language. Cowan has revised

William Strunk William Strunk Jr. (July 1, 1869 – September 26, 1946) was an American professor of English at Cornell University and author of ''The Elements of Style'' (1918). After revision and enlargement by his former student E. B. White, it became a highly ...

's ''

The Elements of Style ''The Elements of Style'' is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary p ...

'' (now in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

). His revisions are "founded on the principle that rules of usage and style cannot be drawn out of thin air, nor constructed a priori according to logic; they must depend on the actual practice of those who are generally acknowledged to be good writers". Cowan is also the author of a comprehensive reference grammar of the constructed language

Lojban Lojban (pronounced ) is a logical, constructed, human language created by the Logical Language Group which aims to be syntactically unambigious. It succeeds the Loglan project. The Logical Language Group (LLG) began developing Lojban in 1987. ...

.John Woldemar Cowan,
The Complete Lojban Language
'. Logical Language Group, 1997, .

References

External links

Personal homepage

Recycled Knowledge
(his personal weblog) {{DEFAULTSORT:Cowan, John W. Lojban People involved with Unicode Living people Year of birth missing (living people)