Understanding Java s Internationalization Support

Overview

The Internet has created a global, electronic shopping mall. Whereas businesses once catered only to customers in their same geographic region, today business is transacted with customers worldwide. A product of this globalization is the need for software that can adapt to the conventions and languages used by customers in different countries. To achieve this, applications must be internationalized. Internationalization, also known as I18N, encompasses tailoring content specific to locales based on their different languages, currencies, and formatting conventions.

Note 

The acronym I18N is sometimes used in place of the word internationalization, because it is such a long word to type. I18N represents the first letter i, followed by 18 characters, and then the final letter n.

From the beginning, Java was designed with internationalization in mind. For example, it offers support for Unicode character sets and provides built-in classes that manage locale-specific content. Struts builds upon Java's support, making development of internationalized Struts applications straightforward. This chapter presents an overview of Java's built-in internationalization support and then explains how Struts' internationalization builds upon it.