Re: [PLUG] internationalization with Java?

[Kyle Burton <mortis@voicenet.com>]

> > I've used GNU Gettext in a C project I've wored on, and it was wonderful.
> > It was highly automated, and made the process of translation very easy.  
> > I was wondering if anyone has done multi-lingual projectds in Java, and 
> > what techniques they have used to make the task of development simpler.
> 
> There's a package (I can't remember the name of it) that's part of the
> standard Java lib that has a bunch of classes for handling
> internationalization.  These include defining resource bundles for text,
> and so forth.  Java was designed from the beginning to be international
> (i.e. it's not an add-on).  In fact, its strings are unicode-based, not
> ASCII-based.

I think it's called java.util.PropertyResourceBundle.  Unfortunatly, this
isn't really a good [automated, maintainable] solution, as it puts most
of the onus on the developes (who are human, and in my case, extremely 
forgetful and fallable).  It's the same kind of technique using lookup
tables that I have worked with in the past, and it's always a lot of
work.

I'm looking for something like gettext, that automates the process of
extracting strings.  As development continues, I'm sure things will change,
strings will be removed, and new ones added.  This is alot of work for
the developers if they have to do things manually.  With gettext, you can
run a utility against your source files, and it extracts all of the strings
for you -- then all of you have to do is provide translations for each of
the strings into each new locale you want to support.  If you change the
sources, you just re-run getext.

Additionaly, the PropertyResourceBundle solution doesn't necessarily address 
html in the JSP's.  Which would make internationalization of the site as a 
whole alot simpler if we had 1 codebase (both servlet, as well as JSP)
that we could use as a template and produce the each of internationalized sites 
from.  Then there's the issue of integrating all of this into a content
management system, but that's another issue all togeater.

> I've not done much work with internationalization, but it seems that Java
> has everything you need.

k

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mortis@voicenet.com                            http://www.voicenet.com/~mortis
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