Java Cookbook:
Creating Global Applications


Closing

Introduction, Converting, Limitations, Future, Closing

With the Unicode support already in Java 1.1, the amount of work that you have to do to globalize your application is much smaller than on other platforms. You can get started right now to localize your programs, which will get your application a long way towards world coverage: covering Europe, the Americas, and (minimally) the Far East. As Java continues to evolve, you soon will be able to localize to all world markets, building on the same base of code you have now.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Brian Beck, Ken Whistler, Laura Werner, Kathleen Wilson, Baldev Soor, Debbie Coutant, Tom McFarland, Lee Collins, Andy Clark, David Goldsmith and Dave Fritz for their review or assistance with this paper.

Pulling the JDK 1.1 international classes together on a very short schedule demanded a lot of hard work by people at Taligent, including Kathleen Wilson, Helena Shih, Chen-Lieh Huang, and John Fitzpatrick. People at the IBM NLTC also assisted, most especially Baldev Soor, but also Siraj Berhan and Stan Winitsky. And without the support and excellent feedback from people at JavaSoft, this work would not have been possible, especially from Brian Beck, but also from Asmus Freytag, David Bowen, Bill Shannon, Mark Reinhold, Guy Steele, Larry Cable, Graham Hamilton, and Naoyuki Ishimura.

Resources

  • For more detailed information about each of the topics, you should definitely consult the Java 1.1 International documentation.
  • More information on Java international classes is available from this Web site.
  • To see how to write robust Java classes, consult Java Cookbook:Well-Mannered Objects.
  • If you are a beginner at Java but are acquainted with C++ or C, look at Java Cookbook: Porting C++ to Java.
  • We also supply C/C++ versions of these classes in case you are interested in licensing them for other applications besides Java. We also provide online updates to this paper and a discussion forum with information on bugs and workarounds.
  • I also strongly recommend buying a copy of The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0 (and I don't even personally get any of the royalties!). For purchasing information and general information about the Unicode Consortium look at the Unicode Web site.

About the Author

Dr. Mark Davis is the director of the Core Technologies department at Taligent, Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM. Dr. Davis co-founded the Unicode effort and is the president of the Unicode Consortium. He is a principal co-author and editor of the Unicode Standard, Version 1.0, and the new Version 2.0.

Mark has considerable expertise in both management and software development. His department encompasses Operating System Services, Text and International. Technically, he specializes in object-oriented programming and in the architecture and implementation of international and text software; his experience ranges from the years he spent programming in Switzerland to his co-authorship of the Macintosh KanjiTalk and the Macintosh Script Manager (which later became WorldScript) to creating the Arabic and Hebrew Macintosh systems, and, most recently, to designing the architecture for the CommonPoint international frameworks and the bulk of the Java 1.1 international libraries.


Introduction, Converting, Limitations, Future, Closing




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