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Internationalization

One of the more comprehensive changes to the JDK provides support for programmers to easily write programs that are independent of the user's culture and language: We call these programs global programs. The process of writing a global program and ensuring that it can be used without change by anyone in the world is a process known as internationalization (often called "I18N" by those who don't care to type the full 20-letter word). Internationalization support is fully integrated into the classes and packages that provide language- or culture-dependent functionality. With internationalization completely built into the JDK, it becomes easy for programmers to write global applets and applications from the design phase forward.

Features added to the JDK to support internationalization include the display of Unicode characters, a locale mechanism, localized message support, locale-sensitive date, time, time zone, and number handling, collation services, character set converters, parameter formatting, and support for finding boundaries of characters, words, and sentences.

Where To Find Documentation

• The Internationalization trail documents these new features and shows you how to internationalize an existing program.

• In addition, you'll find the Internationalization Specification, some information about adding fonts to the Java runtime, and some demo applets in the JDK 1.1 Internationalization documentation area.

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