In the late 1980s, Microsoft's International Product Group (IPG), the team responsible for creating most of the localized versions of Microsoft products, distributed a booklet internally that contained guidelines for writing code that accommodated the needs of international developers and users. The International Handbook for Software Design, as it was called, was revised over the years, expanding in scope to cover several operating systems and most of the Microsoft localization process—including development, design, testing, translation, documentation, packaging, computer-based tutorials, and help files.
Although Microsoft creates multiple-language versions of dozens of software products each year, its methods for doing so haven't always been enlightened. For IPG engineers, the first internationalization efforts involved inheriting finished product sources, fixing "internationally broken" designs, attempting to alter old code that no one remembered, enlarging buffers, removing hard-coded strings, and generally campaigning (begging, threatening) for more international-aware development practices. The International Handbook was distributed throughout the company as part of this awareness campaign.
IPG worked for a number of years to improve the efficiency and lower the cost of creating international versions of Microsoft products. As a result of steady evolution, Microsoft gradually disbanded IPG starting in late 1991, and its employees joined the teams responsible for producing the English-language products. The company felt that it made better sense to have a single team committed to creating all language versions of a product rather than one domestic team and one international team, each reporting to different chains of command. Following this approach, the teams creating Microsoft Windows NT 3.x and Microsoft Windows 95 worked to release high-quality localized versions of the operating system as quickly and efficiently as possible without compromising the United States product.