Microsoft founding programmer to head to International Space Station

Moscow (Russia) - The Russian news agency Novosti has confirmed that Charles Simonyi, the retired Microsoft programmer who designed the word processing engine for the original Microsoft Word, and whose original concept for Multiplan paved the way for all multitasking business software to follow, will be the fourth tourist to head to space on board the International Space Station.

Dr. Simonyi has been credited by some as creating the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editing concept for word processing, first implemented at Xerox PARC and carried on at Microsoft. A native of Budapest, his legacy not only has been felt by users but also by developers everywhere, who to this day utilize his prefixing system for distinguishing types of variables used in programs. Dubbed "Hungarian notation" originally as a joke among Microsoft colleagues, the phrase is still used today to refer to prefixes such as sz_, which stands for "string (of characters) terminated by a zero." The prefix that best classifies Simonyi has yet to be created, as he realizes a lifelong dream, reportedly in the spring of next year...perhaps following some extensive pre-flight training.