Internationalization

Internationalization is the process of designing an application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Sometimes the term internationalization is abbreviated as i18n, because there are 18 letters between the first "i" and the last "n."

An internationalized program has the following characteristics:

• With the addition of localization data, the same executable can run worldwide.
• Textual elements, such as status messages and the GUI component labels, are not hardcoded in the program. Instead they are stored outside the source code and retrieved dynamically.
• Support for new languages does not require recompilation.
• Culturally-dependent data, such as dates and currencies, appear in formats that conform to the end user's region and language.
• It can be localized quickly.

Acknowledgment: Much of the design and implementation of the internationalization API is by IBM's Center for Java Technology-- Silicon Valley. Java Software of Sun Microsystems is grateful for their work.

General Information

• Internationalization Overview
• Internationalization Trail of the Java Tutorial
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Supported Locales
• Supported Encodings

Fonts

• Fonts and Text Layout section of the Java 2D API Guide
• Supported Fonts
• The font.properties Files

Input Methods

• An overview of Input Methods
• Input Method Framework

Demos

The demos will run in the appletviewer tool or in a browser that supports the feature set of version 1.1 of the Java platform or the Java 2 Platform.

• Collation
• Date and time formatting
• Message formatting
• Number formatting
• Text boundaries

Tools

• native2ascii - converts native-encoded characters to and from Unicode
  • Solaris version
  • Windows version