All GUI-based programs display and/or manipulate text in some form or another. Java’s Locale object allows you to display and manage data in a way that conforms to the rules of a particular geographical region, but only the formatting of the data, not the content itself because the String and related classes are not locale-sensitive.
To handle the String and related classes in locale-specific applications, Java provides a number of other classes. In his WebReference article, Rob Gravelle explores these classes and the following tasks:
- Place text in Properties files to separate them from source code
- Creating Properties files for different locales
- ResourceBundle naming
- Using the ListResourceBundle class to work with more complex data types
- Creating your own ResourceBundle
- Loading resource bundles with the ResourceBundle.Control class
