<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css2">
<title>ReadMe for ICU4J</title>
<meta name="COPYRIGHT" content="Copyright 2000-2008, International Business Machines Corporation and others. All Rights Reserved.">
<style type="text/css">
h3.doc { background: #CCCCFF }
</style>
</head>
<body style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" lang="EN-US"
link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080">
<h2>International Components for Unicode for Java (ICU4J)</h2>
<h3>Read Me for ICU4J 4.0</h3>
<hr size="2" width="100%">
<p><b>Release Date</b><br>
July 2, 2008<br>
</p>
<!-- <p><b>Note:</b> This is major release of ICU4J. It contains bug fixes
and adds implementations of inherited API and introduces new API
or functionality. -->
<p><b>Note:</b> This is major release of ICU4J. It contains bug fixes and adds
implementations of inherited API and introduces new API or functionality.
</p>
<p>For the most recent release, see the <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/download/"> ICU4J
download site</a>. </p>
<h3 class="doc">Contents</h3>
<ul type="disc">
<li><a href="#introduction">Introduction to ICU4J</a></li>
<li><a href="#news">What Is New In This Release?</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="#HowToModularize">How to modularize ICU4J</a></li>
<li><a href="#tryingout">Trying Out ICU4J</a></li>
<li><a href="#resources">ICU4J Resource Information</a></li>
<li><a href="#timezone">About ICU4J Time Zone</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 class="doc"><a name="introduction"></a>Introduction to ICU4J</h3>
<p>The International Components for Unicode (ICU) library provides
robust and
full-featured Unicode services on a wide variety of platforms. ICU
supports the
most current version of the Unicode standard, including support for
supplementary characters (needed for GB 18030 repertoire support).</p>
<p>Java provides a strong foundation for global programs, and IBM and
the
ICU team played a key role in providing globalization technology to
Java. But because of its long release schedule, Java cannot always keep
up with evolving standards. The ICU team continues to extend Java's
Unicode and internationalization support, focusing on improving
performance,
keeping current with the Unicode standard, and providing richer APIs,
while
remaining as compatible as possible with the original Java text and
internationalization API design.</p>
<p>ICU4J is an add-on to the regular JRE that provides:
</p>
<ul>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/Collate_Intro.html"><b>Collation</b></a>
– rule-based, up-to-date Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) sorting order<br>
For fast multilingual string comparison; faster
and more complete than
the J2SE implementation</li>
<li><a href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/strings.html"><b>Supplementary
Characters</b></a> – String manipulation and character properties<br>
Required for proper GB 18030 and JIS X 0213
repertoire support</li>
<li><a href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/charsetDetection.html"><b>Charset
Detection</b></a> – Recognition of various single and multibyte charsets<br>
Useful for recognizing untagged text data</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/unicodeSet.html"><b>UnicodeSet</b></a>
– standard set operations optimized for sets of Unicode characters<br>
UnicodeSets can be built from string patterns
using any Unicode properties.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/Transform.html"><b>Transforms</b></a>
– a flexible mechanism for Unicode text conversions<br>
Including Full/Halfwidth conversions,
Normalization, Case conversions, Hex
conversions, and transliterations between scripts (50+ pairs)</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/normalization.html"><b>Unicode
Normalization</b></a> – NFC, NFD, NFKD, NFKC<br>
For canonical text representations, needed for
XML and the net</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/dateCalendar.html"><b>International
Calendars</b></a> – Arabic, Buddhist, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Ethiopic, Islamic, Coptic and other calendars<br>
Required for correct presentation of dates in
certain countries</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/formatNumbers.html"><b>Number
Format
Enhancements</b></a> – Scientific Notation, Spelled-out, etc.<br>
Enhancements to the normal Java number
formatting. The spell-out format is
used for checks and similar documents</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/boundaryAnalysis.html"><b>Enhanced
Word-Break Detection</b></a> – Rule-based, supports Thai<br>
Required for correct support of Thai</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/compression.html"><b>Unicode
Text
Compression</b></a> – Standard compression of Unicode text<br>
Suitable for large numbers of small fields,
where LZW and similar schemes
do not apply</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/conversion.html"><b>Charset Conversion</b></a> – Conversion to and from different charsets.<br>
Plugs into Java CharsetProvider Service Provider Interface (SPI)</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p><b>Note:</b> We continue to provide assistance to Sun, and in some
cases, ICU4J support has been rolled into a later release of Java. For
example, the Thai word-break is now in Java 1.4. However, the most
current and complete version is always found in ICU4J.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="news"></a>What Is New In This Release?</h3>
<p><b>Status of ICU4J charset converter</b></p>
<p>The ICU4J implementation of java.nio.charset.Charset was included in ICU4J 3.8 as
a Technology Preview. In this release, all functionality from the java.nio.Charset
interfaces is operational and promoted to the draft status.
</p>
<p><b>ICU4J Locale Service Provider</b></p>
<p>The ICU4J implementation of Java SE 6 locale sensitive service provider
insterfaces (java.util.spi.LocaleServiceProvider subclasses) is newly added
in this release as a Technology Preview. Please refer to the
<a href="localespi/readme.html">Read Me for ICU4J Locale Service Provider</a>
for more details.
</p>
<p><b>New features</b></p>
<p>
See the <a href="http://www.icu-project.org/download/">ICU 4.0 download page</a> about other
new features in this release.
</p>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="license"></a>License Information</h3>
<p>
The ICU projects (ICU4C and ICU4J) use the X license. The X
license is <b>suitable for commercial use</b> and is a 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 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>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="PlatformDependencies"></a>Platform Dependencies</h3>
<p> By default ICU4J depends on functionality available
in J2SE 1.4 or later releases. Some new ICU4J features support types
introduced in J2SE 5, you can still use the same ICU4J binaries on JRE
1.4. We provide the ability to build a variant of ICU4J that will run
on JRE 1.3, but not all build targets work on that platform. Currently
1.1.x and 1.2.x JREs are unsupported and untested, and you use the
components on these JREs at your own risk.
<p>The table below shows operating systems and JRE/JDK versions currently
used by the ICU development team.
</p>
<table bgcolor="#CCCCFF">
<tr>
<th rowspan="2" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Operating System</th>
<th colspan="3" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Sun Java SE</th>
<th colspan="3" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">IBM Java SE</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">1.6.0</th>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">1.5.0</th>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">1.4.2</th>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">1.6.0</th>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">1.5.0</th>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">1.4.2</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">AIX 5.2</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">AIX 5.3</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">AIX 6.1</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCFF"><em><b>Reference platform</b></em></td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">HP-UX 11 (PA-RISC)</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">HP-UX 11 (IA64)</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 (x86)</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<th>Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86)</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<th>Solaris 9 (SPARC)</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<th>Solaris 10 (SPARC)</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCFF"><em><b>Reference platform</b></em></td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">-</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Windows XP</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Windows Vista</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCFF"><em><b>Reference platform</b></em></td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Windows 2003 Server</th>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Regularly tested</td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#DDDDFF">Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="download"></a>How to Download ICU4J</h3>
<p>There are two ways to download the ICU4J releases.
</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li><b>Official Release:</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 library files.
These versions are tested more thoroughly than day-to-day development
builds, and they are packaged in jar files for convenient download.
These packaged files can be found at the
<a href="http://www.icu-project.org/download/">ICU Downloads page</a>.
</li></ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li><b>Subversion 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 Subversion
repository to ensure that you have the most recent version of all of
the files. There are several ways to do this. Please follow the
directions that are contained on the <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/repository/">Source
Repository page</a> for details.
</li>
</ul>
<p>For more details on how to download ICU4J directly from the web
site, please see the ICU downloads page at <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/download/">http://www.icu-project.org/download/</a>
</p>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="WhatContain"></a>The Structure and Contents of
ICU4J</h3>
<p>Below, <b>$icu4j_root</b> is the placement of the icu directory in your
file system, like
"drive:\...\icu4j" in your environment. "drive:\..." stands for any
drive and any directory on that drive that you chose to install icu4j
into. </p>
<p><b>Information and build files:</b></p>
<table bgcolor="#ccccff" cellpadding="3" frame="void" width="623">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline"><b>readme.html</b><br>
(this file)</td>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">A description of ICU4J
(International Components for Unicode for Java)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">license.html</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">The X license, used by
ICU4J</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">build.xml</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Ant build file. See <a
href="#HowToInstallJavac">How to Install and Build</a> for more
information</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><b>The source directories mirror the package structure of the code.</b><br>
<font color="red">Core</font> packages become part of the ICU4J jar
file.<br>
<font color="red">Charset</font> packages become part of the ICU4J charset jar
file.<br>
<font color="red">LocaleSPI</font> packages become part of the ICU4J Locale
service provider jar file.<br>
<font color="red">RichText</font> classes are Core and API, but can be
removed from icu4j.jar, and can be built into their own jar.<br>
<font color="red">API</font> packages contain classes with supported
API.<br>
</p>
<table bgcolor="#ccccff" border="0" cellpadding="3" frame="void"
width="623">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/charset<br>
<font color="red">Charset, API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Packages that provide Charset conversion
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/dev<br>
<font color="red">Non-Core, Non-API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">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
$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/dev/test/TestAll.java.</li>
<li>Tools: tools used to build data tables, etc.</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/impl<br>
<font color="red">Core, Non-API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">These are utility classes
used from different ICU4J core packages.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/lang<br>
<font color="red">Core, API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Character properties
package.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/math<br>
<font color="red">Core, API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Additional math classes.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/text<br>
<font color="red">Core, API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Additional text classes.
These add to, and in some cases replace, related core Java classes:
<ul>
<li>Arabic shaping </li>
<li>Break iteration </li>
<li>Date formatting </li>
<li>Number formatting </li>
<li>Transliteration </li>
<li>Normalization </li>
<li>String manipulation </li>
<li>Collation </li>
<li>String search </li>
<li>Unicode compression </li>
<li>Unicode sets </li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/icu/util<br>
<font color="red">Core, API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Additional utility
classes:
<ul>
<li>Calendars - Gregorian, Buddhist, Coptic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese and others</li>
<li>Holiday</li>
<li>TimeZone</li>
<li>VersionInfo</li>
<li>Iteration</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/src/com/ibm/richtext<br>
<font color="red">RichText,Non-API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Styled text editing
package. This includes demos, tests, and GUIs for editing and
displaying styled text. The richtext package provides a scrollable
display, typing, arrow-key support, tabs, alignment and justification,
word- and sentence-selection (by double-clicking and triple-clicking,
respectively), text styles, clipboard operations (cut, copy and paste)
and a log of changes for undo-redo. Richtext uses Java's TextLayout and
complex text support (provided to Sun by the ICU4J team).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/localespi/src/com/ibm/icu/impl<br>
<font color="red">LocaleSPI,Non-API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">
Packages for ICU4J Locale Service Provider runtime
code implementing the Java SE 6 locale sensitive service provider interfaces.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/localespi/src/com/ibm/icu/dev<br>
<font color="red">LocaleSPI,Non-API</font></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">
Packages used for internal development for ICU4J Locale Service Provider, including
test cases.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><b>Building ICU4J creates and populates the following directories:</b></p>
<table bgcolor="#ccccff" cellpadding="3" frame="void" width="623">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/classes</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">contains all class files</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">$icu4j_root/doc</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">contains JavaDoc for all
packages</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<p><b>ICU4J data is stored in the following locations:</b></p>
<table bgcolor="#ccccff" border="0" cellpadding="3" frame="void"
width="623">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline"><code>com.ibm.icu.impl.data</code></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Holds data used by the
ICU4J core and charset 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>,
<code>com.ibm.icu.text</code> and <code>com.ibm.icu.charset</code>). In particular, all resource
information is stored here.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline"><code>com.ibm.icu.dev.data</code></th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Holds data that is not
part of ICU4J core, but rather part of a test, sample, or demo.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="API"></a>Where to get Documentation</h3>
<p>The <a href="http://www.icu-project.org/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:
</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/">Index
to all ICU4J API</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/CharsetDetector.html">Charset Detector</a> – Detection of charset from a byte stream</li>
<li>International Calendars –
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/BuddhistCalendar.html">Buddhist</a>,
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/ChineseCalendar.html">Chinese</a>,
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/CopticCalendar.html">Coptic</a>,
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/EthiopicCalendar.html">Ethiopic</a>,
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/GregorianCalendar.html">Gregorian</a>,
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/HebrewCalendar.html">Hebrew</a>,
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/IslamicCalendar.html">Islamic</a>,
<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/JapaneseCalendar.html">Japanese</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/Normalizer.html">Unicode
Normalization</a> – Canonical text representation for W3C.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/NumberFormat.html">Number
Format Enhancements</a> – Scientific Notation, Spelled out.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/BreakIterator.html">Enhanced
word-break detection</a> – Rule-based, supports Thai</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/Transliterator.html">Transliteration</a>
– A general framework for converting text from one format to another,
e.g. Cyrillic to Latin, or Hex to Unicode. </li>
<li>Unicode Text <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/UnicodeCompressor.html">Compression</a>
& <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/UnicodeDecompressor.html">Decompression</a>
– 2:1 compression on English Unicode text.</li>
<li>Collation - <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/RuleBasedCollator.html">Rule-based
sorting</a>, <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/StringSearch.html">Efficient
multi-lingual searching</a> </li>
</ul>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="HowToInstallJavac"></a>How to Install and Build</h3>
<p>To install ICU4J, simply place the prebuilt jar file <strong>icu4j.jar</strong>
on your Java CLASSPATH. If you need Charset API support please place
<strong>icu4j-charsets.jar</strong> on your class path. No other files are needed.</p>
<p>To build ICU4J, you will need a J2SE SDK and the Ant build system.
We strongly recommend using the Ant build system to build ICU4J.
It's recommended to install both the J2SE SDK and Ant somewhere <em>outside</em>
the ICU4J directory. For example, on Linux you might install these in
/usr/local.</p>
<ul>
<li>Install J2SE SDK 5.0. (You can use any version of J2SE SDK 1.4 or newer,
but for J2SE SDK 5.0 is required to enable the all available ICU4J features.)</li>
<li>Install the <a href="http://ant.apache.org/"><strong>Ant</strong></a>
build system. 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 all platforms Ant.
The build system requires Ant 1.6 or later.
<p>Installing Ant is straightforward. Download it (see <a
href="http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi">http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi</a>),
extract it onto your system, set some environment variables, and add
its bin directory to your path. For example: </p>
<pre>
set JAVA_HOME=C:\jdk1.5.0
set ANT_HOME=C:\ant
set PATH=%PATH%;%ANT_HOME%\bin</pre>
<p>See the current Ant documentation for details.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Once the J2SE SDK 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>C:\icu4j>ant
Buildfile: build.xml
checkAntVersion:
warnAntVersion:
initBase:
[mkdir] Created dir: C:\icu4j\classes
[echo] java home: C:\jdk1.5.0
[echo] java version: 1.5.0
[echo] ant java version: 1.5
[echo] Apache Ant version 1.7.0 compiled on December 13 2006
[echo] ICU4JDEV with Windows XP 5.1 build 2600 Service Pack 2 on x86
[echo] clover initstring = '${clover.initstring}'
[echo] target runtime environment: J2SE15
[echo] Initialized at 2007-08-30 at 04:14:09 EDT
buildMangle:
[javac] Compiling 1 source file to C:\icu4j\classes
initSrc:
displayBuildEnvWarning:
doMangle:
[echo] Running source code preprocessor for [J2SE15]
init:
coreData:
[copy] Copying 1 file to C:\icu4j\classes\com\ibm\icu\impl\data
icudata:
[unjar] Expanding: C:\icu4j\src\com\ibm\icu\impl\data\icudata.jar into C:\ic
u4j\classes
[copy] Copying 1 file to C:\icu4j\classes\META-INF
durationdata:
[copy] Copying 16 files to C:\icu4j\classes\com\ibm\icu\impl\duration\impl\
data
core:
[javac] Compiling 317 source files to C:\icu4j\classes
[javac] Note: * uses or overrides a deprecated API.
[javac] Note: Recompile with -Xlint:deprecation for details.
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 10 seconds</pre>
</blockquote>
<I>Note: The above output is an example. The numbers are likely to be different with the current version ICU4J.</I>
<p>The following are some targets that you can provide to <b>ant</b>.
For more targets run <code>ant -projecthelp</code> or see the build.xml file.</p>
<table bgcolor="#ccccff" border="0" cellpadding="3" frame="void"
width="623">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">all</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Build all targets.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">core</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Build the main class
files in the subdirectory <strong>classes</strong>. If no target is
specified, core is assumed.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">tests</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Build the test class
files.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">demos</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Build the demos.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">tools</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Build the tools.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">docs</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Run javadoc over the main
class files, generating an HTML documentation tree in the subdirectory <strong>doc</strong>.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">jar</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Create a jar archive <strong>icu4j.jar</strong>
in the root ICU4J directory containing the main class files.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">jarSrc</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Like the <strong>jar</strong>
target, but containing only the source files. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">jarDocs</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Like the <strong>jar</strong>
target, but containing only the docs. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">richedit</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Build the richedit core
class files and tests. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">richeditJar</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">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>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">richeditZip</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">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>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">clean</th>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="baseline">Remove all built targets,
leaving the source.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<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>
<tt>"ant check"</tt> or
"java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.test.TestAll -nothrow".</p>
<p><b>Eclipse users:</b> See the ICU4J site for information on<a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/docs/eclipse_howto/eclipse_howto.html">
how to configure Eclipse</a> to build and develop ICU4J on Eclipse IDE.</p>
<p><b>Note: </b>To install/build ICU4J Locale Service Provider, please refer
<a href="localespi/readme.html">Read Me for ICU4J Locale Service Provider</a>.</p>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="HowToModularize"></a>How to modularize ICU4J</h3>
<p>Some clients may not wish to ship all of ICU4J with their
application, since the application might only use a small part of ICU4J.
ICU4J release 2.6 and later provide build options to build individual
ICU4J 'modules' for a more compact distribution. For more details, please
refer to the section <em>Modularization of ICU4J</em> in the ICU user's
guide article <a href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/packaging.html">Packaging ICU</a>.
<h3 class="doc"><a name="tryingout"></a>Trying Out ICU4J</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.
</p>
<h4>Charset</h4>
To try out the <strong>Charset</strong> package, build <strong>icu4j.jar</strong> and <strong>icu4j-charsets.jar</strong> using 'jar' target.
You can use the charsets by placing these files on your classpath.
<blockquote><tt>java -cp $icu4j_root/icu4j.jar:$icu4j_root/icu4j-charsets.jar <your program></tt></blockquote>
<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:
<blockquote><tt>java -jar $icu4j_root/richedit/richedit.jar</tt></blockquote>
This will present an empty edit pane with an awt interface.
<p>With a fuller command line you can try out other options, for
example:</p>
<blockquote><tt>java -classpath $icu4j_root/richedit/richedit.jar
com.ibm.richtext.demo.EditDemo [-swing][file]</tt></blockquote>
<p>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:
</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.calendar.CalendarApp</tt></li>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.holiday.HolidayCalendarDemo</tt></li>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.rbnf.RbnfDemo</tt></li>
<li><tt>java -classpath classes com.ibm.icu.dev.demo.translit.Demo</tt></li>
</ul>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="resources">ICU4J Resource Information</a></h3>
Starting with release 2.1, ICU4J includes its own
resource information
which is completely independent of the JRE resource information. (Note,
ICU4J 2.8 to 3.4, time zone information depends on the underlying JRE).
The ICU4J resource information is equivalent to the information in ICU4C and
many resources are, in fact, the same binary files that ICU4C uses.
<p>
By default the ICU4J distribution includes all of the standard resource
information. It is located under the directory com/ibm/icu/impl/data.
Depending on the service, the data is in different locations and in
different formats. <strong>Note:</strong> This will continue to change
from release to release, so clients should not depend on the exact
organization
of the data in ICU4J.</p>
<ul>
<li>The primary <b>locale data</b> is under the directory <tt>icudt40b</tt>,
as a set of <tt>".res"</tt> files whose names are the locale identifiers.
Locale naming is documented the <code>com.ibm.icu.util.ULocale</code>
class, and the use of these names in searching for resources is documented
in <code>com.ibm.icu.util.UResourceBundle</code>.
</li>
<li>The <b>collation data</b> is under the directory <tt>icudt40b/coll</tt>,
as a set of <tt>".res"</tt> files.</li>
<li>The <b>rule-based transliterator data</b> is under the directory
<tt>icudt40b/translit</tt> as a set of <tt>".res"</tt> files. (<b>Note:</b> the
Han transliterator test data is no longer included in the core icu4j.jar
file by default.)</li>
<li>The <b>rule-based number format data</b> is under the directory
<tt>icudt40b/rbnf</tt> as a set of <tt>".res"</tt> files.
<li>The <b>break iterator data</b> is directly under the data
directory, as a set of <tt>".brk"</tt> files, named according to the
type of break and the locale where there are locale-specific versions.</li>
<li>The <b>holiday data</b> is under the <tt>data</tt> directory,
as a set of <tt>".class"</tt> files, named <tt>"HolidayBundle_"</tt>
followed by the locale ID.</li>
<li>The <b>character property data</b> as well as assorted <b>normalization
data</b> and default <b>unicode collation algorithm (UCA) data</b>
is found under the <tt>data</tt> directory as a set of <tt>".icu"</tt>
files. </li>
<li>The <b>character set converter data</b> is under the directory
<tt>icudt40b</tt>, as a set of <tt>".cnv"</tt> files. These files are
currently included only in icu-charset.jar.</li>
<li>The <b>time zone data</b> is named <tt>zoneinfo.res</tt> under
the directory <tt>icudt40b</tt>.</li>
</ul>
<p>
Some of the data files alias or otherwise reference data from other
data files. One reason for this is because some locale names have
changed. For example, <tt>he_IL</tt> used to be <tt>iw_IL</tt>. In
order to support both names but not duplicate the data, one of the
resource files refers to the other file's data. In other cases, a
file may alias a portion of another file's data in order to save
space. Currently ICU4J provides no tool for revealing these
dependencies.</p>
<blockquote><strong>Note:</strong> Java's <code>Locale</code> class
silently converts the language code <tt>"he"</tt> to <tt>"iw"</tt>
when you construct the Locale (for versions of Java through Java 5). Thus
Java cannot be used to locate resources that use the <tt>"he"</tt>
language code. ICU, on the other hand, does not perform this
conversion in ULocale, and instead uses aliasing in the locale data to
represent the same set of data under different locale
ids.</blockquote>
<p>
Resource files that use locale ids 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, <tt>"he_IL"</tt> will match <tt>he_IL</tt>, but
<tt>"he_US"</tt> will match <tt>he</tt> (since there is no <tt>US</tt>
variant for he, and <tt>"xx_YY</tt> will match root (the
default fallback locale) since there is no <tt>xx</tt> language code
in the locale hierarchy. Again, see
<code>java.util.ResourceBundle</code> for more information.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Currently ICU4J provides no tool for revealing these
dependencies</strong> between data files, so trimming the data
directly in the ICU4J project is a hit-or-miss affair. The key point
when you remove data is to make sure to remove all dependencies on
that data as well. For example, if you remove <tt>he.res</tt>, you
need to remove <tt>he_IL.res</tt>, since it is lower in the hierarchy,
and you must remove iw.res, since it references <tt>he.res</tt>, and
<tt>iw_IL.res</tt>, since it depends on it (and also references
<tt>he_IL.res</tt>).
</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>
<h4>Using additional resource files with ICU4J</h4>
<blockquote>
<table cellpadding="3" frame="border" rules="none" width="50%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><b><font color="red" size="+1">Warning:</font> Resource
file formats can change across releases of ICU4J!</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The format of ICU4J resources is not part of the API.
Clients who develop their own resources for use with ICU4J should be
prepared to
regenerate them when they move to new releases of ICU4J.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</blockquote>
<p>
We are still developing ICU4J's resource mechanism. Currently it
is not possible to mix icu's new binary <tt>.res</tt>
resources
with traditional java-style <tt>.class</tt> or <tt>.txt</tt>
resources. We might
allow for this in a future release, but since the resource data and
format is not formally
supported, you run the risk of incompatibilities with future releases
of ICU4J.
</p>
<p>
Resource data in ICU4J is checked in to the repository as a jar file
containing the resource binaries, <tt>icudata.jar</tt>. This
means that inspecting the contents of these resources is difficult.
They currently are compiled from ICU4C <tt>.txt</tt> file data. You
can view the contents of the ICU4C text resource files to understand
the contents of the ICU4J resources.
</p>
<p>
The files in <tt>icudata.jar</tt> get extracted to <tt>com/ibm/icu/impl/data</tt>
in
the build directory when the 'core' target is built.
Building the <tt>'resources'</tt> target will force the
resources to once again be extracted. Extraction will
overwrite any corresponding resource files already in that directory.
</p>
<h4><a name="resourcesICU4C">Building ICU4J Resources from ICU4C</a></h4>
ICU4J data is built by ICU4C tools. Please see "icu4j-readme.txt" in <I>$icu4c_root</I>/source/data for the procedures.
<h5> Generating Data from CLDR </h5>
<I> Note: This procedure assumes that all 3 sources are in sibling directories</I>
<ol>
<li>Checkout CLDR. $cldr_root in the following steps is the root directory where
the CLDR source files checked out.</li>
<li>Update <I>$cldr_root</I>/common to 'release-1-6-0' tag</li>
<li>Update <I>$cldr_root</I>/tools to 'release-1-6-0' tag</li>
<li>Checkout ICU4C with tag 'release-4-0'</li>
<li>Checkout ICU4J with tag 'release-4-0'</li>
<li>Build ICU4J</li>
<li>Build ICU4C</li>
<li>Change to <I>$cldr_root</I>/tools/java directory</li>
<li>Build CLDR using ant after pointing ICU4J_CLASSES env var to the newly build ICU4J</li>
<li>cd to <I>$icu4c_root</I>/source/data directory</li>
<li>Follow the instructions in the cldr-icu-readme.txt</li>
<li>Build ICU4C data from CLDR</li>
<li>Build ICU4J data from ICU4C data by following the procedures in <I>$icu4c_root</I>/source/data/icu4j-readme.txt</li>
<li>cd to <I>$icu4j_root</I> dir</li>
<li>Build and test icu4j</li>
</ol>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="timezone"></a>About ICU4J Time Zone</h3>
<p>ICU4J 4.0 includes time zone data version 2008c, which is the latest one as of
the release date. However, time zone data is frequently updated in response
to changes made by local governments around the world. If you need to update
the time zone data, please refer the ICU user guide topic
<a href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/dateTimezone.html#tzupdate">Updating the Time Zone Data</a>.</p>
<p>Starting with ICU4J 4.0, you can optionally configure ICU4J date and time
service classes to use underlying JDK TimeZone implementation (see the ICU4J API reference
<a href="http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/TimeZone.html">TimeZone</a>
for the details). When this configuration is enabled, ICU's own time zone data
won't be used and you have to get time zone data patches from the JRE vendor.</p>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="WhereToFindMore"></a>Where to Find More
Information</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/icu/">http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/icu/</a>
is a
pointer to general information about the International Components for
Unicode in Java </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/">http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/</a>
is a pointer to
information on how to make applications global. </p>
<h3 class="doc"><a name="SubmittingComments"></a>Submitting Comments,
Requesting Features and
Reporting Bugs</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://www.icu-project.org/contacts.html">ICU Support
mailing list</a>.<br>
While we are not able to respond individually to each comment, we do
review all comments.</p>
<br>
<br>
<h2>Thank you for your interest in ICU4J!</h2>
<br>
<hr align="center" size="2" width="100%">
<p><I><font size="-1">Copyright © 2002-2008 International Business
Machines Corporation and others. All Rights
Reserved.<br>
4400 North First Street, San José, CA 95193, USA
</font></I></p>
</body>
</html>
