A number of locale sensitive operations are performed by Swing components. So far, all of these use only the VM's global default local. This is a problem because Java's locale architecture promises that no locale sensitive operation need depend solely on the global default. In other words, there must be a way to specify a locale explicitly for each locale sensitive operation. All other areas of the JDK conform to this policy.

All Swing components actually contain a Locale property which they inherit from AWT. Ideally, Swing components should prefer the setting of this property to the setting of the global default. Some issues need to be worked out however. For example, it must be possible for components and their related UI objects to receive notification when the locale property changes.