Name: diC59631 Date: 01/07/99

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THIS IS AN IMPORTANT FEATURE REQUEST FOR NON-ENGLISH SPEAKER USING WIN32

RFE 4125884 was "Change System.out and System.err to be PrintWriters". This=
 RFE has been "Closed, will not be fixed" because of backward-compatibility=
 problems.

RFE 4151267 said "java.lang.System provide Reader/Writer versions of System=
.err, System.out". It is not done in JDK 1.2, and we don't know if it will =
be done.

RFE 4139481 ("java.io.PrintStream: Un-deprecate the constructors") said "Th=
is class (PrintStream) does implement a proper character-to-byte conversion=
 using the platform's default encoding; it was deprecated merely to encoura=
ge the use of the new java.io.PrintWriter class."

This is the problem: PrintStream use the platform's DEFAULT encoding. In Wi=
ndows 95, the default encoding is NOT the MS-DOS encoding. For example the =
Windows 95's default encoding may be Cp1252, but the MS-DOS command prompt'=
s encoding may be Cp863. It make no difference for English-only text, but i=
t make a big difference for languages with others characters when a Java ap=
plication is run from the command prompt. For example the sentence "Il a =
=E9t=E9 p=EAcher =E0 c=F4t=E9 de l'=EEle" is correctly wrote on AWT compone=
nt (which use the correct default encoding) but almost unreadeable on Syste=
m.err, because System.out and System.err use the wrong encoding for the MS-=
DOS command prompt ("Il a ?t? p?cher ? c?t? de l'?le").

I'm not asking for any API change. I just want System.out and System.err to=
 use the MS-DOS encoding instead of the default encoding on Windows platfor=
m. The MS-DOS encoding can be obtained with native code. No other changes n=
eeded; output stream created with "new PrintStream(...)" will continue to u=
se the default encoding.

Use of proper encoding by System.out and System.err will help to prevent so=
me mistake among non-English developper (please see 4028073 for an example =
of such a mistake). If non-English speaker didn't complain to much about th=
at before, maybe it is because we are use to that. You can't imagine the me=
ss we receive in some non-english email!
(Review ID: 52239)
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