Name: mt13159 Date: 05/04/2001


This bug affects all JDKs (since 1.2) and Operating Systems. For lack of a more appropriate sub-category this is filed under l10n-japan.

While English (_en) localizations exist for LocaleElements and DateZoneFormatData, they are missing for a large number of other JDK files e.g., Look-and-Feel, AWT and Swing components, tools, etc. Oracle?s most immediate needs are the former two.

The problem the missing localization cause is that, due to the ResourceBundle hierarchy, the desired locale if set to English, will fail to load English resources when default locale is set otherwise. To illustrate, consider the following example, an Applet is run with its locale explicitly set English, but the underlying default locale set to Japanese. According to the hierarchy the Applet tries to load ResourceBundles for Look-and-Feel, the Applet messages and menus, etc. for the desired locale first. Failing to find any ResourceBundles with the ?_en? suffix, the hierarchical loading mechanism then searches for Japanese resources with the ?_ja? suffix. The JDK include Japanese localizations and these are loaded, though the user?s Applet explicit wanted English ? not Japanese ? localizations. The result is an inconsistent, undesirable user interface.

The base bundle, that coincidentally contains English localizations, is never reached through the ResourceBundle loading hierarchy. As the base bundle can contain any localization, this is not necessarily a problem with the hierarchy.

The best way to resolve this is create English ?_en? bundles (stubs where possible) to include in the JDK. English bundles are required for LAF and Swing/AWT ideally in time for JDK 1.4. Tools and other English bundles could be later if time is an issue.
(Review ID: 123751)
======================================================================