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<h2>International Components for Unicode for Java</h2>
<h3>Read Me for ICU4J 2.4</h3>
<hr size="2" width="100%" align="center">
<p><b>Release Date</b><br>
December 15th, 2002</p>
<p>For the most recent
release, see the <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/download/index.html">
ICU4J download site</a>.
</P>
<h3><u>Contents</u></h3>
<ul type="disc">
<li><a href="#introduction">Introduction to ICU4J (International Components for Unicode for Java)</a></li>
<li><a href="#license">License Information</a></li>
<li><a href="#PlatformDependencies">Platform Dependencies</a></li>
<li><a href="#download">How to Download ICU4J</a></li>
<li><a href="#WhatContain">The Structure and Contents of ICU4J</a></li>
<li><a href="#API">Where to Get Documentation</a></li>
<li><a href="#HowToInstallJavac">How to Install and Build</a></li>
<li><a href="#tryingout">Trying Out ICU4J</a></li>
<li><a href="#resources">ICU4J Resource Information</a></li>
<li><a href="#WhereToFindMore">Where to Find More Information</a></li>
<li><a href="#SubmittingComments">Submitting Comments, Requesting Features and Reporting
Bugs</a></li>
</ul>
<h3><a NAME="introduction"></a><u>Introduction to ICU4J (International Components for Unicode for Java)</u></h3>
<p>Today's global market demands programs that support a wide variety
of languages and national conventions. Customers prefer software
and web pages tailored to their needs, studies confirm that
this leads to increased sales. Java provides a strong
foundation for global programs, and IBM and the ICU4J team played
a key role in providing globalization technology to Sun for use in
Java. </p>
<p>
But Java does not yet provide all the features that some products require. ICU4J is an add-on library that extends Java's globalization technology by providing the following tools:
<ul>
<li>
Unicode Normalization <20> NFC, NFD, NFKD, NFKC
<blockquote>Produces canonical text representations, needed for XML and the net.</blockquote>
<li>
International Calendars <20> Arabic, Buddhist, Hebrew, and Japanese<br>
<blockquote>Required for correct presentation of dates in some countries.</blockquote>
<li>
Number Format Enhancements <20> Scientific Notation, Spelled-out Numbers
<blockquote>Enhances standard Java number formatting. The spelled-out format is used
for checks and similar documents.</blockquote>
<li>Enhanced word-break detection <20> Rule-based, supports Thai
<blockquote>Required for correct support of Thai.</blockquote>
<li>Unicode Text Compression <20> Standard compression of Unicode text
<blockquote>Suitable for large numbers of small fields, where LZW and similar schemes
do not apply.</blockquote>
<li>Collation - Rule-based, up-to-date Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) sorting order
<blockquote>For fast multilingual string comparison</blockquote>
</ul>
In some cases, the above support has been rolled into a later release of
Java. For example, the Thai word-break is now in Java 1.4. However, if you
are using Java 1.3, you can use the ICU4J package until you upgrade to 1.4.
</p>
<h3><a name=license></a><u>License Information</u></h3>
<p>
The ICU projects (ICU4C and ICU4J) use the X license. The X license is a <b>non-viral</b> and recommended free software license that is compatible with the GNU GPL license. This became effective with release 1.8.1 of ICU4C and release 1.3.1 of ICU4J in mid-2001. All new ICU releases will adopt the X license; previous ICU releases continue to utilize the IPL (IBM Public License). Users of previous releases of ICU who want to adopt new ICU releases will need to accept the terms and conditions of the X license.
</p>
<p>
The main effect of the change is to provide GPL compatibility. The X license is listed as GPL compatible, see the gnu page at <a href=http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses>
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses</a>. This means that GPL projects can now use ICU code, it does <b>not</b> mean that projects using ICU become subject to GPL.
</p>
<p>
The text of the X license is available at <a href=http://www.x.org/terms.htm>http://www.x.org/terms.htm</a>. The IBM version contains the essential text of the license, omitting the X-specific trademarks and copyright notices. The full copy of <a href=license.html>ICU's license</a> is included in the download package.
</p>
<p>
For more details please see the <a href=http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/press.html>press announcement</a> and the <a href=http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/project_faq.html#license>Project FAQ</a>.
</p>
<h3><a NAME="PlatformDependencies"></a><u>Platform Dependencies</u></h3>
<P>
Parts of ICU4J depend on functionality that is only available in JDK 1.3
or later, although some components work under earlier JVMs. All
components should be compiled using a Java2 compiler, as even components
that run under earlier JVMs can require language features that are only
present in Java2. Currently 1.1.x and 1.2.x JVMs are unsupported and untested, and you use
the components on these JVMs at your own risk.</P>
<p>
The reference platforms which we support and test ICU4J on are:<ul>
<li> Win2000, IBM JDK 1.3</li>
<li> Solaris 2.7, Sun JDK 1.3</li>
<li> AIX 5.1, IBM JDK 1.3</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>Please use the most recent updates of the supported JDK versions.</p>
<p>Additionally, we have built and tested ICU4J on the following <b>unsupported</b> platforms:
<ul>
<li> Win98, WinNT, WinXP / IBM JDK 1.3, 1.3.1, Sun JDK 1.3.1, 1.4, 1.4.1</li>
<li> Win2000 / IBM JDK 1.3.1, Sun JDK 1.3.1, 1.4, 1.4.1</li>
<li> Solaris 2.6 , Solaris 2.8 / Sun JDK 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.4, 1.4.1</li>
<li> Solaris 2.7 / Sun JDK 1.3.1, 1.4, 1.4.1</li>
<li> AIX 5.1, IBM JDK 1.3.1</li>
</ul>
<h3><a NAME="obtaining"></a><u>How to Download ICU4J</u></h3>
<p>There are two ways to download the ICU4J releases.
<ul type="disc">
<li><b>Official Release Snapshot:</b><br>
If you want to use ICU4J (as opposed to developing it), your best
bet is to download an official, packaged version of the ICU4J
source code. These versions are tested more thoroughly than
day-to-day development builds, and they are packaged in zip files
for convenient download. These packaged files can be found
at <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/download/index.html">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/download/index.html</a>. If a packaged snapshot is named <b>ICU4JXXXXXX.zip</b>, where XXXXXX is
the release version number. Please unzip this file. It
will reconstruct the source directory. </li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li><b>CVS Source Repository:</b><br>
If you are interested in developing features, patches, or bug fixes for ICU4J, you should
probably be working with the latest version of the ICU4J source code. You will need to
check the code out of our CVS repository to ensure that you have the most recent version
of all of the files. There are several ways to do this: <br>
<ul type="circle">
<li>WebCVS:<br>
If you want to browse the code and only make occasional downloads, you may want to use
WebCVS. It provides a convenient, web-based interface for browsing and downloading the
latest version of the ICU4J source code and documentation. You can also view each file's
revision history, display the differences between individual revisions, determine which
revisions were part of which official release, and so on. <br>
</li>
<li>WinCVS:<br>
If you will be doing serious work on ICU4J, you should probably install a CVS client on
your own machine so that you can do batch operations without going through the WebCVS
interface. On Windows, we suggest the WinCVS client. To download ICU4J via WinCVS: <ol>
<li>Install the WinCVS client, which you can download from the <a
href="http://www.wincvs.org">http://www.wincvs.org</a>.</li>
<li>Select <strong>Preferences</strong> from the <strong>Admin</strong> menu.<ol type="a">
<li>On the <strong>General</strong> tab panel: Set your <strong>CVSROOT</strong> to "<strong>:pserver:anoncvs@oss.software.ibm.com:/usr/cvs/icu4j</strong>".<br>
Leave other options on this page at their default.</li>
<li>On the <strong>Ports</strong> tab panel: Check the <strong>pserver</strong> checkbox and
enter port <strong>2401</strong>.</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Click on the Login menu button (<strong>Admin</strong> menu). Enter in "<strong>anoncvs</strong>" when requested.</li>
<li>To extract the most recent version of ICU4J, select <strong>Checkout module</strong>
from the <strong>Create</strong> menu. Specify "<strong>icu4j</strong>" for the
module name. This will create a new copy of the workspace on your local hard drive.</li>
<li>In the future, you can download updated files from the repository to your hard drive
using the <strong>Update selection</strong> item in the <strong>Modify</strong> menu.<br>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>CVS command line:<br>
You can also check out the repository anonymously on UNIX using the following commands,
after first setting your CVSROOT to point to the ICU4J repository: <pre><code>export CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@oss.software.ibm.com:/usr/cvs/icu4j
cvs login CVS password: anoncvs
cvs checkout icu4j
cvs logout</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>For more details on how to download ICU4J directly from the web site, please also see <a
href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/download/index.html">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/download/index.html</a>
</p>
<h3><a NAME="WhatContain"></a><u>The Structure and Contents of ICU4J</u></h3>
<p>Below, <b>$Root</b> is the placement of the icu directory in your file system, like
"drive:\...\icu4j" in your environment. "drive:\..." stands for any
drive and any directory on that drive that you chose to install icu4j into. </p>
<p><b>Information and build files:</b></p>
<table BORDER="1" CELLPADDING="3">
<tr>
<td>readme.html<br>
(this file)</td>
<td>A description of ICU4J (International Components for Unicode for Java)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>releasenotes.html
<td>A description of features and changes in this and prior releases of ICU4J</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>license.html</td>
<td>The X license, used by ICU4J</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>build.bat</td>
<td>A convenience bat file for building ICU4J with Ant on Windows</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>build.sh</td>
<td>A convenience sh file for building ICU4J with Ant on Unix</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>build.xml</td>
<td>Ant build file. See <a href="#HowToInstallJavac">How to Install and Build</a> for more information</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><b>The source directories mirror the package structure of the code.</b><br><font color="red">Core</font> packages become part of the ICU4J jar file.<br><font color="red">API</font> packages contain classes with supported API. <br><font color="red">RichText</font> classes are Core and API, but can be removed from icu4j.jar, and can be built into their own jar.</p>
<table BORDER="1" CELLPADDING="3" WIDTH="623">
<tr>
<td>$Root/src/com/ibm/icu/dev<br><font color="red">Non-Core, Non-API</font></td>
<td>Packages used for internal development:
<ul>
<li>Data: data used by tests and in building ICU</li>
<li>Demos: Calendar, Holiday, Break Iterator, Rule-based Number Format, Transformations<br>(See <a href="#tryingout">below</a> for more information about the demos.)</li>
<li>Tests: API and coverage tests of all functionality.<br>For information about running the tests, see $Root/src/com/ibm/icu/dev/test/TestAll.java.</li>
<li>Tools: tools used to build data tables, etc.</li></ul></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$Root/src/com/ibm/icu/impl<br><font color="red">Core, Non-API</font></td>
<td>These are utility classes used from different ICU4J core packages.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$Root/src/com/ibm/icu/lang<br><font color="red">Core, API</font></td>
<td>Character properties package.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$Root/src/com/ibm/icu/math<br><font color="red">Core, API</font></td>
<td>Additional math classes.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$Root/src/com/ibm/icu/text<br><font color="red">Core, API</font></td>
<td>Additional text classes. These add to, and in some cases replace, related core Java classes:
<ul>
<li>Arabic shaping
<li>Break iteration
<li>Date formatting
<li>Number formatting
<li>Transliteration
<li>Normalization
<li>String manipulation
<li>Collation
<li>String search
<li>Unicode compression
<li>Unicode sets
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$Root/src/com/ibm/icu/util<br><font color="red">Core, API</font></td>
<td>Additional utility classes:
<ul>
<li>Calendars - Gregorian, Buddhist, Hebrew, Islamic, Japanese
<li>Holiday</li>
<li>TimeZone</li>
<li>VersionInfo</li>
<li>Iteration</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$Root/src/com/ibm/richtext<br><font color="red">RichText</font></td>
<td>Styled text editing
package. This includes demos, tests, and GUIs for editing and
displaying styled text. The richtext package provides a
scrollable display, typing, arrow-key support, tabs, alignment and
justification, word- and sentence-selection (by double-clicking
and triple-clicking, respectively), text styles, clipboard
operations (cut, copy and paste) and a log of changes for
undo-redo. Richtext uses Java's TextLayout and complex
text support (provided to Sun by the ICU4J team).</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><b>Building ICU4J creates and populates the following directories:</b> </p>
<table BORDER="1" CELLPADDING="3">
<tr>
<td>$Root/classes</td>
<td>contains all class files</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$Root/doc</td>
<td>contains JavaDoc for all packages</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><b>Data organization:</b> </p>
<p>ICU4J data is stored in the following locations:
<table BORDER="1" CELLPADDING="3" WIDTH="623">
<tr>
<td><code>com.ibm.icu.impl.data</code></td>
<td>Holds data used by the ICU4J core packages (<code>com.ibm.icu.lang</code>, <code>com.ibm.icu.text</code>, <code>com.ibm.icu.util</code>, <code>com.ibm.icu.math</code> and <code>com.ibm.icu.text</code>). In particular, all resource information is stored here.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><code>com.ibm.icu.dev.data</code></td>
<td>Holds data that is not part of ICU4J core, but rather part of a test, sample, or demo.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3><u><a name="API"></a>Where to get Documentation</u></h3>
<p>The <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/">ICU user's guide</a> contains lots of general information about ICU, in its C, C++, and Java incarnations.</p>
<p>The complete API documentation for ICU4J (javadoc) is available on the ICU4J web site, and can be built from the sources:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/index.html">Index to all ICU4J API</a></li>
<li>International Calendars – <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/util/IslamicCalendar.html">Islamic</a>,
<a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/util/BuddhistCalendar.html">Buddhist</a>, <a
href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/util/HebrewCalendar.html">Hebrew</a>, <a
href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/util/JapaneseCalendar.html">Japanese</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/Normalizer.html">Unicode Normalization</a> –
Canonical text representation for W3C.</li>
<li><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/NumberFormat.html">Number Format Enhancements</a> –
Scientific Notation, Spelled out.</li>
<li><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/BreakIterator.html">Enhanced word-break detection</a>
– Rule-based, supports Thai</li>
<li><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/Transliterator.html">Transliteration</a> – A general framework for onverting text from one format to another, e.g. Cyrillic to Latin, or Hex to Unicode.
<li>Unicode Text <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/UnicodeCompressor.html">Compression</a> &
<a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/UnicodeDecompressor.html">Decompression</a> – 2:1
compression on English Unicode text.</li>
<li>Collation - <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/RuleBasedCollator.html">Rule-based sorting</a>, <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/StringSearch.html">Efficient multi-lingual searching</a> </li>
</ul>
<h3><a NAME="HowToInstallJavac"></a><u>How to Install and Build</u></h3>
<p>To install ICU4J, simply place the prebuilt jar file <strong>icu4j.jar</strong> on your
Java CLASSPATH. No other files are needed.</p>
<p>To build ICU4J, you will need a Java2 JDK and the Ant build system.
We strongly recommend using the Ant build system to build ICU4J:</p>
<ul>
<li>It's recommended to install both the JDK and Ant somewhere <em>outside</em> the ICU4J
directory. For example, on Linux you might install these
in /usr/local.</li>
<li>Install a recent JDK, version 1.3.x or 1.4.x will work.</li>
<li><p>Next install the <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/"><strong>Ant</strong></a> build
system, part of the Apache Software Foundation's <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/"><strong>Jakarta</strong></a>
project. Ant is a portable, Java-based build system similar to make. ICU4J uses Ant
because it introduces no other dependencies, it's portable, and it's easier to manage than
a collection of makefiles. We currently build ICU4J using a single makefile on both
Windows 9x and Linux using Ant. The build system requires Ant 1.4 or later.</p>
<p>Installing Ant is straightforward. Download it (see <a
href="http://jakarta.apache.org/downloads/binindex.html">http://jakarta.apache.org/downloads/binindex.html</a>),
extract it onto your system, set some environment variables, and add its bin directory to
your path. For example:<pre> set JAVA_HOME=C:\jdk1.3.1
set ANT_HOME=C:\jakarta-ant
set PATH=%PATH%;%ANT_HOME%\bin</pre></p>
<p>See the current Ant documentation for details.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Once the JDK and Ant are installed, building is just a matter of
typing <strong>ant</strong> in the ICU4J root directory. This causes
the Ant build system to perform a build as specified by the file
<strong>build.xml</strong>, located in the ICU4J root directory. You
can give Ant options like -verbose, and you can specify targets. Ant
will only build what's been changed and will resolve dependencies
properly. For example:</p>
<blockquote>
<pre>F:\icu4j>ant tests
Buildfile: build.xml
Project base dir set to: F:\icu4j
Executing Target: core
Compiling 71 source files to F:\icu4j\classes
Executing Target: tests
Compiling 24 source files to F:\icu4j\classes
Completed in 19 seconds</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>The following are some targets that you can give after <strong>ant</strong>. For more
targets, see the build.xml file:</p>
<div align="left">
<table border="1" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td>all</td>
<td>Build all targets.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>core</td>
<td>Build the main class files in the subdirectory <strong>classes</strong>. If no target
is specified, core is assumed.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>tests</td>
<td>Build the test class files.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>demos</td>
<td>Build the demos.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>tools</td>
<td>Build the tools.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>docs</td>
<td>Run javadoc over the main class files, generating an HTML documentation tree in the
subdirectory <strong>doc</strong>.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>jar</td>
<td>Create a jar archive <strong>icu4j.jar</strong> in the root ICU4J directory containing
the main class files.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>zip</td>
<td>Create a zip archive of the source, docs, and jar file for distribution. The zip file <strong>icu4jYYYYMMDD.zip</strong>
will be created in the directory <em>above</em> the root ICU4J directory, where YYYYMMDD
is today's date. Any existing file of that name will be overwritten.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>zipsrc</td>
<td>Like the <strong>zip</strong> target, without the docs and the jar file. The zip file <strong>icu4jsrcYYYYMMDD.zip</strong>
will be created in the directory <em>above</em> the root ICU4J directory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>richedit</td>
<td>Build the richedit core class files and tests.
</tr>
<tr>
<td>richeditJar</td>
<td>Create the richedit jar file (which contains only the richedit core class files).
The file <strong>richedit.jar</strong>
will be created in the <strong>./richedit</strong> subdirectory. Any existing file of
that name will be overwritten.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>richeditZip</td>
<td>Create a zip archive of the richedit docs and jar file for distribution. The zip file <strong>richedit.zip</strong>
will be created in the <strong>./richedit</strong> subdirectory. Any existing file of
that name will be overwritten.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>clean</td>
<td>Remove all built targets, leaving the source.</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<p>For more information, read the Ant documentation and the <strong>build.xml</strong>
file.</p>
<p>After doing a build it is a good idea to run all the icu4j tests by typing <br>"java
-classpath $Root/classes -DUnicodeData=$Root/src/com/ibm/icu/dev/data/unicode com.ibm.dev.test.TestAll".</p>
<p>(If you are allergic to build systems, as an alternative to using
Ant you can build by running javac and javadoc directly. This
is not recommended. You may have to manually create destination
directories.)</p>
<h3><a name="tryingout"></a><u>Trying Out ICU4J</u></h3>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> the demos provided with ICU4J are for the
most part undocumented. This list can show you where to look, but you'll
have to experiment a bit. The demos (with the
exception of richedit) are <strong>unsupported</strong> and may change
or disappear without notice.</p>
<p>The icu4j.jar file contains only the core ICU4J classes, not the
demo classes, so unless you build ICU4J there is little to try out.
<h4>Rich Edit</h4>
To try out the <strong>richedit</strong> package, first build the richeditJar target.
This is a 'runnable' jar file. To run the richedit demo, type:
<tt><blockquote> java -jar $Root/richedit/richedit.jar</blockquote></tt>
This will present an empty edit pane with an awt interface.</p>
<p>With a fuller command line you can try out other options, for example:
<tt><blockquote> java -classpath $Root/richedit/richedit.jar com.ibm.richtext.demo.EditDemo [-swing][file]</blockquote></tt>
This will use an awt GUI, or a swing GUI if
<tt>-swing</tt> is passed on the command line. It will open a text
file if one is provided, otherwise it will open a blank page. Click
to type.</p>
<p>
You can add tabs to the tab ruler by clicking in the ruler while holding down the control key.
Clicking on an existing tab changes between left, right, center, and decimal tabs. Dragging
a tab moves it, dragging it off the ruler removes it.</p>
<p>
You can experiment with complex text by using the keymap functions.
Please note that these are mainly for demo purposes, for real work
with Arabic or Hebrew you will want to use an input method. You will
need to use a font that supports Arabic or Hebrew, 'Lucida Sans' (provided
with Java) supports these languages.</p>
<h4>Other demos</h4>
<p>The other demo programs are <strong>not supported</strong> and exist only to let you
experiment with the ICU4J classes. First, build ICU4J using <tt>ant all</tt>. Then try
one of the following:
<ul>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.calendar.CalendarApp</tt>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.holiday.HolidayCalendarDemo</tt>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.rbbi.TextBoundDemo</tt><br>(Click in the text, then use <tt>ctrl-N</tt> and <tt>ctrl-P</tt> to select the next or previous block of text.)
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.rbnf.RbnfDemo</tt>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.translit.Demo</tt>
</ul>
</p>
<a name="resources">
<h3><u>ICU4J Resource Information</u></h3>
</a>
Starting with release 2.1, ICU4J includes its own
resource information
which is completely independent of the JDK resource information. The
new ICU4J information is equivalent to the information in ICU4C and
ultimately derives from the same source. This allows ICU4J 2.1 and above
to be
built on, and run on, JDK 1.4.
</p>
<p>
By default the ICU4J distribution includes all of the new resource
information. It is located in the package com.ibm.icu.impl.data, as a
set of class files named "LocaleElements" followed by the names of
locales in the form _xx_YY_ZZZZ, where 'xx' is the two-letter language
code, 'YY' is the country code, and 'ZZ' (which can be any length) is
a variant. Many of these fields can be omitted. Locale naming is
documented the Locale class, java.util.Locale, and the use of these
names in searching for resources is documented in
java.util.ResourceBundle.
</p>
<p>
Some of these files require separate binary data. The names of the
binary data files start with "CollationElements", then the
corresponding Locale string, and end with '.res'. Another data file
(only one at the moment) starts with the name "BreakDictionaryData",
the corresponding Locale string, and ends with '.ucs'.
</p>
<p>
Some of the LocaleElements files share data with other LocaleElements
files, because some Locale names have changed. For example, he_IL used
to be iw_IL. In order to support both names but not duplicate the
data, one of the class files refers to the other class file's data.
</p>
<p>
The list of supported resources is found in a file called
LocaleElements_index.class. This contains the names of all the
LocaleElements resources and is the source of the information returned
by API such as Calendar.getAvailableLocales. (Note: for ease of
customization this probably should be a text file).
</p>
<p>
LocaleElements files form a hierarchy, with up to four levels: a root,
language, region (country), and variant. Searches for locale data
attempt to match as far down the hierarchy as possible, for example,
'he_IL' will match LocaleElements_he_IL, but 'he_US' will match
LocaleElements_he (since there is no 'US' variant for 'he', and
'xx_YY' will match LocaleElements (since there is no 'xx' language
code in the LocaleElements hierarchy). Again, see
java.util.ResourceBundle for more information.
</p>
<p>
With this in mind, the way to remove LocaleData is to make sure to
remove all dependencies on that data as well. For example, if you
remove LocaleElements_he.class, you need to remove
LocaleElements_he_IL.class, since it is lower in the hierarchy, and
you must remove LocaleElements_iw.class, since it references
LocaleElements_he, and LocaleELements_iw_IL.class, since it depends on
it (and also references LocaleElements_he_IL). For another example,
if you remove CollationElements_zh__PINYIN.res, you must also remove
LocaleElements_zh__PINYIN.class, since it depends on the
CollationElements_zh__PINYIN.res.
</p>
<p>
Unfortunately, the jar tool in the JDK provides no way to remove items
from a jar file. Thus you have to extract the resources, remove the
ones you don't want, and then create a new jar file with the remining
resources. See the jar tool information for how to do this. Before
'rejaring' the files, be sure to thoroughly test your application with
the remaining resources, making sure each required resource is
present.
</p>
<h3>Developing Resources to be used with ICU4J</h3>
<p>
ICU4J 2.1 and above uses the standard class lookup mechanism. This means
any ppropriately named resource on the CLASSPATH will be located, in the
order listed in the classpath.
</p>
<p>
If you create a resource file
com.ibm.icu.impl.data.LocaleElements_xx_YY.class, and list it on the
CLASSPATH before icu4j.jar, your resource will be used in place of any
existing LocaleElements_xx_YY resource in icu4j. This is a good way
to try out changes to resources. You can, for example, include the
resource in your application's jar file and list it ahead of
icu4j.jar.
</p>
<p>
In order to create new resources, you first must thoroughly understand
the various elements contained in the resource files, their syntax and
dependencies. You cannot simply 'patch' existing resource files with
a single change because the new file completely replaces the old file
in the resource hierarchy. In general, the new resource file should
contain all the different data that the old one did, plus your
changes.
</p>
<p>
Adding a new 'leaf' resource is easiest. Elements defined in that
resource will override corresponding ones in the resources further up
the hierarchy. Thus you can, for example, try out new localized names
of days of the week, as they are all contained in one element. The
variant mechanism can be used to temporarily try out new versions of
existing resource elements (though we don't recommend shipping this
way). Note though that some resources have detailed dependencies on
each other, so that you cannot simply assume that a new element with
the same structure and number of contents will 'just work.'
</p>
<p>
Patching an 'internal' resource (say, one corresponding to an existing
language resource that has children) requires careful analysis of the
contents of the resources.
</p>
<p>
LocaleElements resource data in ICU4J is checked in to the
repository as precompiled class files. This means that inspecting the
contents of these resources is difficult. They are compiled from java
files that in turn are machine-generated from ICU4C binary data, using
the genrb tool in ICU4C. You can view the contents of the ICU4C text
resource files to understand the contents of the ICU4J resources, as
they are the same.
</p>
<h3>Developing ICU4J Resources</h3>
<p>
Currently only the LocaleElements resource data is shared, other ICU
resources (calendar, transliterator, etc.) are still checked in
directly to ICU4J as source files. This means that development and
maintenance of these resources continues as before, only
LocaleElements resource data has been changed in ICU4J 2.1. This
probably will change in the future once we work out a reasonable
mechanism for storing and generating the resource data.
</p>
<p>
One goal of using the same resource data as ICU4C is to avoid keeping
redundant copies of the resource data. Currently there is no separate
repository of the 'master' resource data, it is checked in to ICU4C,
and the tools for converting it to .java files are ICU4C tools. This
is inconvenient for working in Java, but since maintenance of ICU4J
and ICU4C is supposed to go on 'in parallel,' as a practical matter
people will have to be familiar with development in both C and Java,
and with the conventions and structure of each project. Additionally,
sharing of data means that modifications to data immediately impact
both projects (as it should) and thus both projects need to be tested
when such changes are made. The bulk of the tools are currently on
the ICU4C side, and will likely stay that way, so this seems like a
reasonable initial approach to sharing the data.
</p>
<p>
While prototyping of LocaleElements data can occur in either Java or
C, the final version should be checked in to ICU4C in text format.
Genrb is then run to generate the .java and .res files. They are then
compiled and jar'd into the file ICULocaleData.jar. The resulting jar
file is then checked in to ICU4J as
src/com/ibm/icu/dev/data/ICULocaleData.jar. (This is not great but it
allows ICU4J to be downloaded and built as one project, instead of
two, one for locale data and one for ICU4J proper. Given the 2.4
schedule it wasn't possible to work out the larger data sharing
problem in time, so we tried to limit the impact to just what was
needed to get JDK 1.4 support up and running.)
</p>
<p>
The files in ICULocaleData.jar get extracted to com/ibm/icu/impl/data in
the build directory when the 'core' target is built. Thereafter, as
long as the file LocaleElements_index.class file is untouched, they will
not be extracted again. Building the 'resource' target will force the
resources to once again be extracted. Extraction will
overwrite any corresponding .class files already in that directory.
</p>
<h3><a name="WhereToFindMore"></a><u>Where to Find More Information</u></h3>
<p>For information specific to this current release, please refer to the <a href="releasenotes.html">releasenotes.html</a></p>
<p><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/</a> is a
pointer to general information about the International Components for Unicode in Java </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ibm.com/developer/unicode">http://www.ibm.com/developer/unicode</a> is a pointer to
information on how to make applications global. </p>
<h3><a NAME="SubmittingComments"></a><u>Submitting Comments, Requesting Features and
Reporting Bugs</u></h3>
<p>Your comments are important to making ICU4J successful. We are committed
to fixing any bugs, and will use your feedback to help plan future releases.</p>
<p>To submit comments, request features and report bugs, contact us through the <a href=http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/archives/index.html>ICU4J mailing list</a>.<br>
While we are not able to respond individually to each comment, we do review all comments.</p>
<p>Thanks for your interest in ICU4J!</p>
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