Revision as of 20:15, 22 October 2009

JAVA localization basics

You can translate the JAMS graphical user interfaces by editing JAMS language files. Those files contain lines of the format

<key>=<value>

where key is some string identifier and value a term in a certain language. An example would be:

ExplorerDisabled=JAMS Explorer is diabled in this version! 

The interfaces are translated by replacing the right part with the translated terms. In order to preserve a proper generation of combined terms, leading and trailing whitespace characters must be kept. The results must be stored in a file following the naming convention

<name>_<lcode>_<ccode>.properties

with the following meaning:

• <name> is a string describing the files content, i.e. "JAMSBundle" or "JUICEBundle"
• <lcode> is a 2-character abbreviation for the language name according to ISO 639-1, see http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php for a complete list.
• <ccode> is a 2-character abbreviation for the country name according to ISO 3166-1, see http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists.htm for a complete list.

As an example, the proper name for a file containing brazilian portuguese language strings for JAMS would be JAMSBundle_pt_BR.properties. In general, the country code can be omitted, e.g. JAMSBundle_pt.properties is a proper file name for portuguese translations in general.

Patching existing JAMS libraries

In order to patch the language files of already existing JAMS libraries, proceed as follows.

• make sure you have the JDK java development package installed
• open a DOS command prompt
• change into the directory containing the JAMS *.jar files (cd c:\program files\jams\lib)
• extract the JAMS language file by running

 jar -xf jams-main.jar resources/JAMSBundle.properties

• translate the file resources\JAMSBundle.properties, save it and rename it to resources\JAMSBundle_<lcode>_<ccode>.properties according to the conventions described above
• write the modified file back to the archive by running

 jar -uf jams-main.jar resources/JAMSBundle_<lcode>_<ccode>.properties

• delete the extracted files by running

 rmdir /s/q resources

• extract the JUICE language file by running the command

 jar -xf jams-ui.jar resources/JUICEBundle.properties

• translate the file resources\JUICEBundle.properties, save it and rename it to resources\JUICEBundle_<lcode>_<ccode>.properties according to the conventions described above
• write the modified file back to the archive by running

 jar -uf jams-ui.jar resources/JUICEBundle_<lcode>_<ccode>.properties

• delete the extracted files by running

 rmdir /s/q resources

On the next start of JAMS, the interface should show up with the translated terms. If not, make sure that the "Force language" entry in the JAMS properties dialog is empty. If the interface still comes up with the default localization (english), you can also force JAMS to use a localization by entering its language code in the "Force language" entry of the JAMS properties dialog. JAMS must be restarted after changing the "Force language" entry in order to correctly apply the new localization.