Internationalization

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

Can somebody tell me about a couple of options to have a Spanish version of any website? I will highly appreciate any advice.

[Paul Sturrock]

Not an advanced question. Moving...

[Michael Ku]

You need to externalize your strings and make them internationalized. This is a basic Java capability. For a web site, you can use Struts or JSTL to help handle this for you.

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

Can you direct me to some documents explaining how to achieve this. I found an article here
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/04/12/internationalization.html

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

Just to clarify. This is for a web/ejb application.

[Bear Bibeault]

Investigate the fmt tags of the JSTL.

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

Thank you very much Sir.

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

The coding is done at this point and the English version is running (not done by me). If I uses JSTL or struts, I would have to go back and change many things. The document found here
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/wa-xslt/
has a different approach using xml and xslt. Does anybody know more about this or any other approach like this?

[Ulf Dittmer]

Internationalizing a web site is a major effort no matter which approach you choose. You may have to adjust the layout, too, since many languages (and definitely Spanish) use more letters on average than English for the same text.

Using JSTL seems like good advice; introducing Struts just for this is overkill.

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

Thank you for the advice. I know how to do it using struts and I think you are right that it over kills. I read in the J2EE tutorial about the Internationalization tag library and I still have many thinks unclear. If you know of any other easy to understand document can you please post it here.

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

We use custom tag libraries for jsp (developed by a consulting company). So I am not supposed to use jstl tags. Can somebody tell me about any other ways of internationalizing a website? I will highly appreciate that.

[Bear Bibeault]

Heaven save us from consulting companies. What nimrod decided to disallow use of a standard in order to use something proprietary?

If their custom tag library doesn't support internationalization, what's the rationale behind not using the JSTL to do so? Makes no sense whatsoever.
[ October 18, 2007: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

You are right Sir. I found a document at
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/wa-xslt/
Looks like this is one way of doing this. But I have to find some other ways of doing this, compare them and present the pros and cons. This is a brand new environment, brand new project and the tag libraries are proprietary. Looks like I am screwed. Can somebody suggest something?

[Bear Bibeault]

Were it me, I'd present using the standardized JSTL tags and have the powers that be explain why that's not a valid choice. "Just because" isn't acceptable.

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

I did that already.
When I presented jstl/struts approach to internationalize another project to some other manager few months ago, he liked it. But now I work for a new boss and for a new project and he does not like jstl since we have to stick with the custom library. It is off the table now. Is there any other method that is easy and can be done with less effort?

[Bear Bibeault]

What is his rationale for not letting you use the JSTL for the internationalization beside "just because".

If the custom library doesn't do internationalization why search for something other than JSTL?

It makes no sense. I don't know what kind of clout you have, but personally I'd not relent until I had a good answer as to why beyond "because I said so".

I guess you could always set up your own custom tags to do exactly what the JSTL does, but what would that gain you?

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

Basically the product we bought/developed by a consulting company uses custom tags. So he doesn�t want me to use jstl since we will have to rewrite all jsps. He is looking for some other methods using xml or plane java/properties files etc.

[Bear Bibeault]

JSTL works with plain Java properties files.

Why would there be a need to rewrite all the JSPs? You are going to be adding the I18N stuff anyways, what difference does it make if it's JSTL or Fred's Fantastic Fabulous Tag Set?

You don't need to propose replacing all the custom stuff with JSTL, just use the JSTL formatting tags when you need to do the I18N. The custom stuff (silly as that is) that overlaps the JSTL can still be used; there's no need to replace it just because you will be using the <fmt:message> tag for I18N.

[Bear Bibeault]

P.S. I18N == internationalization

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

You are saying to replace the tags to display with jstl tags? That sounds good.
But is there any other methods as an alternative?

[Bear Bibeault]

I'm sure that if you search around youcould find any other number of proprietary tags sets that do I18N. To me, it makes no sense to introduce yet another proprietary library when the JSTL is available to do exactly what you need.

[PradeepPillai Pradeep]

Thank you. Let me ask you this. I have written custom tag libraries a while ago. I forgot it almost. Is there any way to write custom tag libraries with the existing tag libraries for internationalization for our proprietary tag library?
Also is there any way to achieve internationalization using xml?