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.

In order to patch the language files of already existing JAMS libraries, proceed as follows. First of all, make sure you have the JDK java development package installed. The files that I am referring to are part of the new JAMS version which has a new package structure. Please install the current version of JAMS that is available at http://jams.uni-jena.de. Afterwards, you can edit the language files by following the these steps:

• 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

• edit the file resources\JAMSBundle.properties as you like, save it and rename it to resources\JAMSBundle_??.properties, where ?? stands for
• write the modified file back to the archive by running

 jar -uf jams-main.jar resources/JAMSBundle_pt.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_pt.properties

• edit the file resources\JUICEBundle_pt.properties as you like
• write the modified file back to the archive by running

 jar -uf jams-ui.jar resources/JUICEBundle_pt.properties

• delete the extracted files by running

 rmdir /s/q resources