Michael Everson, based in Westport, is an expert in the writing systems of the world. He is active in supporting minority-language communities, especially in the fields of character standardisation and internationalisation. Everson has just published a print edition of Paul Denisowski's ESPDIC, Esperanto-English Dictionary. Esperanto is a neutral, internationally recognised language and is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Everson says: “I trust that this book will prove a welcome and useful tool for students of Esperanto.”
Everson was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 1963, and moved to Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 12. He studied German, Spanish, and French for his BA at the University of Arizona (1985 ), and the history of religions and Indo-European linguistics for his MA. at the University of California, Los Angeles (1988 ). He moved to Ireland in 1989, and was a Fulbright Scholar in the Faculty of Celtic Studies, University College Dublin (1991 ). He is one of the co-authors of the Unicode Standard, and is a contributing editor and Irish national representative to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2, the committee responsible for the development and maintenance of the universal character set.
In 2003 he was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme to prepare a report on the computer locale requirements for Afghanistan, which was endorsed by the Ministry of Communications of the Afghan Transitional Islamic Administration. He prepared a number of fonts and keyboard layouts for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther ).
In 2005 and 2006 his work to encode the Balinese and N’Ko scripts was supported by UNESCO’s Initiative B@bel programme.
Everson received the Unicode “Bulldog” Award in 2000 for his technical contributions to the development and promotion of the UnicodeStandard.
