Michael Everson#Publishing at Evertype

{{BLP sources section|date=August 2018}}

Everson was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and moved to Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 12. His interest in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien led him to study Old English and then other Germanic languages. He read German, Spanish, and French for his B.A. at the University of Arizona (1985), and the History of Religions and Indo-European linguistics for his M.A. at the University of California, Los Angeles (1988){{citation needed|date=July 2020}}.

In 1989, a former professor, Dr. Marija Gimbutas, asked him to read a paper{{cite web|url=http://www.evertype.com/misc/basque-jies/basque-jies.html|title=Tenacity in religion, myth, and folklore|publisher=Evertype.com|access-date=March 11, 2015}} on Basque mythology at an Indo-Europeanist Conference held in Ireland; shortly thereafter he moved to Dublin, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar in the Faculty of Celtic Studies, University College Dublin (1991).{{cite web|url=http://www.evertype.com/misc/bio.html|title=About Michael Everson|work=Evertype.com|access-date=November 28, 2010}} He became a naturalized Irish citizen in 2000, although he retains American citizenship.

Everson is active in supporting minority-language communities, especially in the fields of character encoding standardization and internationalization. In addition to being one of the primary contributing editors of the Unicode Standard, he is also a contributing editor to ISO/IEC 10646, registrar for ISO 15924,{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/iso15924/|title=ISO 15924 Registration Authority|publisher=ISO, Unicode, Inc., & Evertype|year=2004|access-date=March 11, 2015}} and subtag reviewer for BCP 47. He has contributed to the encoding of many scripts and characters in those standards, receiving the Unicode Bulldog Award in 2000{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/conference/bulldog.html|title=The Bulldog Award|publisher=Unicode, Inc.|access-date=March 11, 2015}} for his technical contributions to the development and promotion of the Unicode Standard. In 2004, Everson was appointed convenor of ISO TC46/WG3 (Conversion of Written Languages), which is responsible for transliteration standards.

Everson is one of the co-editors (along with Rick McGowan, Ken Whistler, and V.S. Umamaheswaran) of the Unicode roadmaps that detail actual and proposed allocations for current and future Unicode scripts and blocks.{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/|title=Roadmaps to Unicode|website=unicode.org}}

On July 1, 2012, Everson was appointed to the Volapük Academy by the Cifal, Brian R. Bishop, for his work in Volapük publishing.[http://volapük.com/kadam/Dalebud_Cifala_de_2012-07-01,_Num-_1.html] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130123110829/http://xn--volapk-7ya.com/kadam/Dalebud_Cifala_de_2012-07-01%2C_Num-_1.html |date=January 23, 2013 }}

Everson has been actively involved in the encoding of many scripts{{cite web|first=Michael|last=Everson|publisher=Evertype|url=http://www.evertype.com/formal.html|title=Papers formally submitted to the Unicode Technical Committee and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 (Universal Character Set)|date=March 19, 2009|access-date=March 11, 2015}} in the Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 standards, including Avestan, Balinese, Bamum, Bassa Vah, Batak, Braille, Brāhmī, Buginese, Buhid, Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Carian, Cham, Cherokee, Coptic, Cuneiform, Cypriot, Deseret, Duployan, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Elbasan, Ethiopic, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gothic, Hanunóo, Imperial Aramaic, Inscriptional Pahlavi, Inscriptional Parthian, Javanese, Kayah Li, Khmer, Lepcha, Limbu, Linear A, Linear B, Lycian, Lydian, Mandaic, Manichaean, Meitei Mayek, Mongolian, Myanmar, Nabataean, New Tai Lue, N'Ko, Ogham, Ol Chiki, Old Hungarian, Old Italic, Old North Arabian, Old Persian, Old South Arabian, Old Turkic, Osmanya, Palmyrene, Phaistos Disc, Phoenician, Rejang, Runic, Samaritan, Saurashtra, Shavian, Sinhala, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tai Le, Tai Tham, Thaana, Tibetan, Ugaritic, Vai, and Yi, as well as many characters belonging to the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts.

Everson authored or co-authored proposals for many symbol characters for encoding into Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. Among those proposals submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 that have been accepted and encoded: N2586R ({{unichar|267E|PERMANENT PAPER SIGN}} and four other miscellaneous symbols{{cite web|url=http://unicode.org/wg2/docs/n2586r.pdf|title=Proposal to encode five miscellaneous symbols in the UCS|date=September 4, 2003|website=unicode.org}} admitted into Unicode 4.1), N3727 (the 26 Regional Indicator Symbols used in pairs to generate national flags in emoji contexts;{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09379-n3727-regionalindicators.pdf|title=Proposal to encode Regional Indicator Symbols in the UCS|date=September 18, 2009|website=unicode.org}} adopted into Unicode 6.0), and N4783R2 (chess notation symbols{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17033r2-n4783r2-chess-notation.pdf|title=Proposal to encode symbols for chess notation|date=January 26, 2017|website=unicode.org}} encoded into Unicode 11.0).

Among proposals that have not yet been approved for encoding: N1866 (an early proposal for encoding Blissymbols into the Supplementary Multilingual Plane of Unicode;{{cite web|url=http://unicode.org/wg2/docs/n1866.pdf|title=Encoding Blissymbolics in Plane 1 of the UCS|date=September 10, 1998|website=unicode.org}} still listed in the SMP roadmap as of Unicode 15.0{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/smp-15-0-2.html|title=Roadmap to the SMP|date=April 9, 2023|website=unicode.org}} although no further action had been taken on it for years).

Everson, along with Doug Ewell, Rebecca Bettencourt, Ricardo Bánffy, Eduardo Marín Silva, Elias Mårtenson, Mark Shoulson, Shawn Steele, and Rebecca Turner, is a contributor to the Terminals Working Group researching obscure characters found in legacy character sets used by home computers (or "microcomputers"), terminals, and other legacy devices made from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s; thanks to their proposal L2/19-025, 212 graphic characters for compatibility with MSX, Commodore 64, and other microcomputers of the era, as well as Teletext, were encoded in the Symbols for Legacy Computing block,{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19025-terminals-prop.pdf|title=Proposal to add characters from legacy computers and teletext to the UCS|date=January 4, 2019|website=unicode.org}} while 731 additional characters from L2/21-235 have been accepted for a future version of the standard.{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22016.htm#170-C15|title=Approved Minutes of UTC Meeting 170|date=January 25, 2022|website=unicode.org}}

In 1995 he designed a Unicode font, Everson Mono, a monospaced typeface with more than 4,800 characters. This font was the third Unicode-encoded font to contain a large number of characters from many character blocks, after Lucida Sans Unicode and Unihan font (both 1993). In 2007 he was commissioned by the International Association of Coptic Studies to create a standard free Unicode 5.1 font for Coptic, Antinoou, using the Sahidic style.{{cite web|url=http://www.evertype.com/fonts/coptic/ |title=Antinoou - A standard font for Coptic |publisher=Evertype |access-date=March 11, 2015}}

Together with John Cowan, he is also responsible for the ConScript Unicode Registry, a project to coordinate the mapping of artificial scripts into the Unicode Private Use Area. Among the scripts "encoded" in the CSUR, Shavian and Deseret were eventually formally adopted into Unicode; two other conscripts under consideration are Tolkien's scripts of Tengwar and Cirth.

Everson has also created locale and language information for many languages, from support for the Irish language and the other Celtic languages to the minority Languages of Finland.{{cite web|first=Michael|last=Everson|publisher=Evertype|url=http://www.evertype.com/standards/se/loc.html|date=March 14, 1997|title=Sami locales|access-date=March 11, 2015}} In 2000, together with Trond Trosterud, he co-authored Software localization into Nynorsk Norwegian, a report commissioned by the Norwegian Language Council. In 2003 he was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme to prepare a report{{cite web|first=Michael|last=Everson|first2=Roozbeh|last2=Pournader|url=http://www.evertype.com/standards/af/af-locales.pdf|title=Computer Locale Requirements for Afghanistan|date=July 29, 2003|publisher=Evertype}} on the computer locale requirements for the major languages of Afghanistan (Pashto, Dari, and Uzbek), co-authored by Roozbeh Pournader, which was endorsed by the Ministry of Communications of the Afghan Transitional Islamic Administration.{{cite journal|url=http://www.unescap.org/rural/doc/pai/paivol13no2.pdf|title=Afghans beat language obstacle to entering digital age|journal=Poverty Alleviation Initiatives|date=April–June 2003|volume=13|issue=2|publisher=United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific|author=Lepage, Marc|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061012190755/http://www.unescap.org/rural/doc/pai/paivol13no2.pdf|archive-date=October 12, 2006}} More recently, UNESCO's Initiative B@bel{{cite web |url=http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=16541&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050313172859/http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID%3D16541%26URL_DO%3DDO_TOPIC%26URL_SECTION%3D201.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 13, 2005 |title=UNESCO B@bel Initiative |publisher=Portal.unesco.org |access-date=November 21, 2011 }} funded Everson's work to encode the N'Ko and Balinese scripts.{{cite web|url=http://portal.unesco.org/ci/admin/ev.php?URL_ID=17490&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=110024633|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160107040404/http://portal.unesco.org/ci/admin/ev.php?URL_ID=17490&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=110024633|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 7, 2016|title=Development of a Unicode standard for the West African Language N'ko|work=Multilingualism in Cyberspace|publisher=UNESCO|date=November 12, 2004|access-date=March 11, 2015}}

In 2007 he co-authored a proposal for a new standard written form of Cornish, called Kernowek Standard.[http://www.kernowak.com/kernowak-revision-15.pdf] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927214309/http://www.kernowak.com/kernowak-revision-15.pdf |date=September 27, 2007 }} Following the publication of the Standard Written Form in 2008, Everson and a group of other users examined the specification and implemented a set of modifications to it, publishing a formal specification in 2012.Williams, Nicholas. 2012. Desky Kernowek: A Complete Guide to Cornish. Cathair na Mart: Evertype. {{ISBN|978-1-904808-99-2}}

{{As of|March 2014}} Everson operates a publishing company, Evertype, through which he has published a total of 295 books.{{cite web|title=Evertype complete catalogue|url=http://www.evertype.com/catalogue.html|publisher=Evertype.com|access-date=December 26, 2019}} These include a wide range of titles by various authors and editors, with Everson himself as co-author of one, editor of several, and having adapted or revised several more. He also designed fonts for several.

Everson has a particular interest in Gaelic typeface design, and does a considerable amount of work typesetting books in Irish for publication by Evertype.{{cite web|first=Michael|last=Everson|publisher=Evertype|url=http://www.evertype.com/books.html|title=Books typeset by Michael Everson|date=October 5, 2006|access-date=March 11, 2015}}

Another project consists of his publications of translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in many languages, amongst which are minority languages and constructed languages.{{cite web|url=http://www.evertype.com/carrolliana.html|title=Evertype Publications - Wonderland and Carrolliana|publisher=Evertype.com|access-date=March 11, 2015}} Translations are available in Cornish, Esperanto, French, German, Hawaiian, Irish, Italian, Jèrriais, Ladino, Latin, Lingua Franca Nova, Lingwa de planeta, Low German, Manx, Mennonite Low German, Borain Picard, Sambahsa, Scots, Shavian transliteration, Swedish, Ulster Scots and Welsh, with several other translations being prepared.{{citation needed|date=September 2019}}

{{Reflist}}

{{Portal|Cornwall}}

{{Commons category}}

• [http://www.evertype.com/ Evertype.com], Michael Everson's website
• {{twitter}}
• [http://archives.wbur.org/theconnection/2003/11/20/alphabetician-to-the-world.html An interview with Michael Everson] by Dick Gordon on The Connection, a National Public Radio public affairs call-in program
• [http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/tdf/id/2068104 Dork Forest interview] by Jackie Kashian, 2012-09-18
• {{LCAuth|n97113362|Michael Everson|6|ue}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Everson, Michael}}

Category:1963 births

Category:Living people

Category:American emigrants to Ireland

Category:Children's book publishers

Category:Cornish language revival

Category:Irish typographers and type designers

Category:Lewis Carroll

Category:Linguists from the Republic of Ireland

Category:People from Norristown, Pennsylvania

Category:People involved with Unicode

Category:Irish publishers (people)

Category:University of Arizona alumni

Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni

Category:Volapükologists