Special Edition Using Java 2 Standard Edition

Packaging Locale-Sensitive Data

The Locale class allows you to easily handle Locale-sensitive methods. However, most programs (especially applets and GUI-based applications) require the use of Strings, data, and other resources that also need to be localized. For instance, most GUI programs have OK and Cancel buttons. This is fine for the United States, but other locales require different labels for these buttons. In Germany, for instance, you might use Gut and Abbrechen instead. Traditionally, information such as this was included in the source code of an application, which can lead to many problems when trying to simultaneously support many localized versions of one program. To solve this problem, Java provides a way to encapsulate this data ...