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FAQs

Language Support

NOTE: This material does not necessarily refer to the most recent version of Java. For the most recent FAQs, see here.

Farsi Language Support

Is there any support for Farsi in java?
Can you please tell me what is needed to be added to java so it can completely support the Farsi language?
Can you give me some URLs to study more about java internationalization and Farsi support?
How can I implement the following:
1. Farsi fonts in applets?
2. Correct sort order of Unicode characters?
3. Farsi input for Servlets and JSP?
4. Support of Unicode characters in java source code files?
Is Farsi a superset/subset of Arabic?
Can I display and edit Farsi using an Arabic font?

Ethiopic/Ge`ez Support

Tigrigna, Amharic and many other languages in Eritrea and Ethiopia use the Ge'ez fonts. Can you tell me if these fonts are supported by Java?

Hindi Language Support

Does Java Support Hindi(Devanagiri) Language?
What should the font.properties file contain?

Malaysia Locale Support

The Locale class does not appear to support Malaysia. Is there any plan to add missing countries, currencies, languages to the Locale and DecimalFormat classes?

Tamil Font Support

I'm working with java font properties files. I can change the properties file in jdk lib and it works in appletviewer in the textarea. But in the browser is not displayed the changing font. I am use tamil font. It is correctly displayed in the textarea. But in the browsers only english fonts are displayed. How can I modify the font properties file to fix this? Is there a reason it is not working in the browser?
If the browsers don't support other languages in java, how we can implement multilingual java programs for chat or email?
How can I implement similar features in Java?

Swing Right-to-Left Text Entry Support

Does Swing 1.1 (in JDK 1.2) support right-to-left text entry?

If Swing 1.1 (in JDK 1.2) supports right-to-left text entry in the future, will using Swing 1.1 with JDK 1.1 work like this as well?

Farsi Language Support

Is there any support for Farsi in java?

There is no explicit support for Farsi in Java. There are no Farsi locales and we do not do any testing to make sure Farsi script can be displayed. However, we do support Arabic script and I believe that if you have a font that contains the Farsi glyphs, we should be able to render it just like Arabic.

Can you please tell me what is needed to be added to java so it can completely support the Farsi language?

The bad news is that you can not get complete Farsi support yourself. There are some things that we (Sun or other licensees) must do to make any new language or locale available.

The good news is that much of what you would need can be done without our help in the current release of Java.

Can you give me some URLs to study more about java internationalization and Farsi support?

The best URLs are to be found at java.sun.com. Look at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/intl/index.html for a start.

How can I implement the following:

Farsi fonts in applets?
Correct sort order of Unicode characters?
Farsi input for Servlets and JSP?
Support of Unicode characters in java source code files?

A Farsi font is not supplied by Java at this time. However, any True Type font with Farsi glyphs should work. Even better would be an OpenType Farsi font. A good start would be to look at the fonts Microsoft Word uses to display Farsi.
The RuleBasedCollator class is programmable so you should be able to build a custom collator that works for Farsi. You will not be able to have the Collator factory methods return your Farsi collator however. That's one of the things we have to do.
You can create a simple input method that remaps the keyboard for generating Farsi characters. This only works inside a Java program however. Servlets and JSPs run on the server side however so you're really relying on your browser for input if you use them. So you'll have to get a browser that supports Farsi.
Java source code files already support any Unicode character. Farsi should be no different here.

Is Farsi a superset/subset of Arabic?

Farsi is neither a superset nor a subset of Arabic. Farsi has more gylphs than arabic but it is not a super set of arabic, because for example the letter "k" has different gylph's in Farsi and arabic, and the collation of letters are quite different in Farsi and arabic.

Can I display and edit Farsi using an Arabic font?

Farsi has 4 extra letters above standard Arabic - peh, tcheh, jeh and gaf. Their unicodes are u067e, u0686, u0698 and u06af. There are a couple of fonts that I know of that contain these glyphs although the Lucida Sans font that comes with Java does not include these glyphs. For reference, the two fonts I refer to are "Andale Mono WT J" from Monotype and "Traditional Arabic" which I think is also from Monotype. With both of these fonts, I was able to display the four additional characters and they seemed to shape correctly. I tried this experiment with the release version of JDK 1.3. So I think you should be able to at least display and edit Farsi correctly.

Ethiopic/Ge'ez Support

Tigrigna, Amharic and many other languages in Eritrea and Ethiopia use the Ge'ez fonts. Can you tell me if these fonts are supported by Java?

I guess the short answer is that Java does not currently support Ethiopic or Ge'ez script. Java depends on the Unicode character set and currently, Java supports version 2.1 of Unicode. Ethiopic was not added to Unicode until version 3.0.

We are working on support for Unicode 3.0 right now and expect it to be part of the next major release of Java (likely known as version 1.4). At that time, if your Ge'ez fonts are in the True Type format and contain a Unicode cmap table, you should be able to display languages like Tigrigna, Amharic and so on. Typing these languages, however, will require the use of an input method. We are not working on such an input method although there is an API that will allow you to write your own. While I'm not an expert in these languages, from what I do know I do not believe that writing such an input method would be difficult.

After you can enter and display the Ethiopic scripts you will want locale support for the various languages and countries that use those scripts. This includes things like support for sorting these languages, formatting numbers and currency values etc. Again, this is not something we are working on now or for which we have specific plans. We do eventually hope to make it possible for our users to add locale support for countries we do not yet support directly, however, this feature will not be part of the 1.4 release of Java.

Hindi Language Support

Does Java Support Hindi(Devanagiri) Language?
What should the font.properties file contain?

Unfortunately, Java does not yet support the Hindi language. You could edit a font.properties file to contain fonts with Devenagari glyphs or you could use a Devenagari True Type font directly from a Font constructor but either way you still would not get Hindi text to display correctly. This is because our text display routines are not yet able to handle the glyph reordering or complex conjuncts required by Hindi.

The good news is, we do have a project underway to add Hindi support to Java. We expect this support to be released in the feature release that follows version 1.3.

Malaysia Locale Support

The Locale class does not appear to support Malaysia. Is there any plan to add missing countries, currencies, languages to the Locale and DecimalFormat classes?

Yes, we're currently looking into which locales need to be added for the java.util/java.text functionality, and Malaysia is definitely on the list. Unfortunately though, you won't see it in a public release until some time next year.

Tamil Font Support

I'm working with java font properties files. I can change the properties file in jdk lib and it works in appletviewer in the textarea. But in the browser is not displayed the changing font. I am use tamil font. It is correctly displayed in the textarea. But in the browsers only english fonts are displayed. How can i modify the font properties file to fix this? Is there a reason it is not working in the browser?

In general, Java can not support Tamil at this time. The JDK is unable to understand the glyph reordering required for rendering Tamil with Unicode. The fact that you see it working in appletviewer with a text area is probably just luck. It almost certainly wouldn't work with Swing or Java2D.

The good news is that we are working on supporting various Indic languages for the next major release of Java.

If the browsers don't support other languages in java, how we can implement multilingual java programs for chat or email?

Java can support many languages both in Java applications and within the browser environment. You can use Java to write a multi-lingual chat or email that could handle languages like English, French, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and many others. Unfortunately, at this time, this list could not include Tamil or any of the other Indic languages. This is because Java can't correctly map sequences of Indic Unicode characters to sequences of Indic glyphs.

Currently if you need to handle Indic languages, your best choice is to use one of IBM's implementations of Java. IBMs JDK 1.2.2 release handles Hindi although I don't think it covers Tamil.

I saw a website, "tamilanjal.com" They use a texteditor for email, which supports Tamil. They use java coding to implement the texteditor. How can I implement similar features in Java?

This is probably how they achieve this:

1) They are probably not using a Unicode font.
2) They are probably using a custom font that makes Tamil look like it has the same layout rules as English.
3) Users probably have to type in "visual" order rather than "logical" order. Thus the user and not the program takes care of handling things like Tamil split glyphs.

If these are true, what this means is that its a combination of their application, their font and the user that is providing the Tamil support, not Java. Obviously you can do this too if you like. Remember that saying "Java doesn't support something" never means that something is impossible. A Java program can do anything that a computer can do - its just a matter of how much work the Java programmer has to do to achieve the goal.

Thai Support

I am interested in writing a Global application with Java. From Sun JDK Document(JDK1.3), I have learned that JDK now supports Thai Locales, but it 's not 100% supported. I can't create new Objects like menu bars with the default locale set to Thai. I am interested in developing a Locale class to fully support thai. Could you give me some information about how to develop this new locale?

Currently the JDK doesn't fully support Thai. It does provide basic locale information and a TIS620 character encoding converter but it does not provide support for the required complex text layout, word breaking, collation, nor calendar. It will not be possible for you to add support for these areas without a deep understanding of the JDK internals and a re-implementation of a lot of code.

We are aware of the issues with this and we have some requests for support of this locale. If you wish to ensure that such projects get done then go to the Java Developer Connection site and vote for this bug.

I am trying to display a number after formatting it in Thai language [charset 0E00-0E7F] in my applet. I modified the font.properties files, created a class file CharToByteThai with the canConvert() & convert() methods in it and I installed thaittf fonts on my machine[win NT].

This doesn't seem to work. It is displaying 3 weird characters in the textfield. Is there something I am doing wrong?

While your simple converter may work (0x0D60 is the correct offset) it will not be able to handle the other non-Thai characters in that set. You should use the converter that is included to handle TIS620 (the Thai encoding standard) called CharToByteTIS620.

While that may get you over the initial hurdle be aware that the current Java Runtime Environment doesn't fully support Thai. Most importantly this means that the complex text layout required by the Thai language is not supported. So while you may be able to show the glyphs for individual characters you will not be able to have any of them properly composed. For example a Pho Phung (U+0E1C) plus a Sara UU (U+0E39) and a Mai Tho tone mark (U+0E49) will appear as separate glyphs one after the other and not stacked as they should be.

de_DE_EURO Locale Support

Can you tell me the version of the JRE 1.1.6_* that supports the de_DE_EURO locale? I know that 1.1.7_07 supports the de_DE_EURO locale but we need this for 1.1.6_* as our product runs on 1.1.6_*.

Euro support was introduced in JDK 1.1.7. There was no de_DE_EURO locale prior. Likewise, previous versions of the JDK did not support the version of Unicode that contains the Euro character.

Swing Right-to-Left Text Entry Support

Does Swing 1.1 (in JDK 1.2) support right-to-left text entry?

This answer is complicated because the support in JDK 1.2 is incomplete. We do have some basic support in Swing at the JDK 1.2 level. In particular, the two styled text components, JTextPane and JEditorPane can be enabled for rtl text. The two plain text components, JTextArea and JTextField can not be enabled for rtl text. Furthermore, the rtl support in the styled text components only kicks in when you set an undocumented Document Property on the document being used by your text component. If you need to know more about how to do this, let me know. Finally, when rtl support is turned on, there are a number of bugs that make the rtl support somewhat less than industrial strength. Whether you are able to live with these restrictions will depend on your particular situation. Still, we felt it was better to get what we had into the JDK sooner rather than later.

The good news is that the rtl support in JDK 1.3 is *much* better. Have a look at the beta or look for one of the release candidates which will be posted soon.

If Swing 1.1 (in JDK 1.2) supports right-to-left text entry in the future, will using Swing 1.1 with JDK 1.1 work like this as well?

No. Much of the rtl support depends on the Java 2D text functionality that was added in JDK 1.2.

You fundamentally need JDK 1.2 to support rtl text.

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