[opencms-dev] Problems with labels in workplace_ru.properties
Claus Priisholm
cpr at codedroids.com
Thu Oct 1 09:50:16 CEST 2009
The Properties specification allows for an XML variant that by default
use UTF-8 (loadFromXML() -
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Properties.html).
Unfortunately the Properties.load method does not try to determine if
the content of the stream it is given is xml or old style property
format, so you will have to decide whether to use load() or
loadFromXML() somewhere before loading the properties. This also has
implications for the ResourceBundle class as it does not load XML
formatted properties. At least you can give it your own controller as of
Java 1.6, but for older versions it is a problem if you use the
ResourceBundle class.
Luckily there is the CmsResourceBundleLoader class that seems to
centralize loading of properties in OpenCms, so it is likely that one
could patch that class to provide support for loading files on either of
the two formats.
Best Regards
Claus
Paul-Inge Flakstad wrote:
> Hi Christian
>
> It is indeed horrible, just imagine how much easier it would have been
> to use utf-8 (or at least be able to specify the encoding)..! No idea
> what Sun has been thinking (or not thinking at all) all the time they
> haven't addressed this issue. Yes, the native2ascii thing is fine, but
> damn what a messy "solution" that is...
>
> I agree that the format of the .properties files have a nice simplicity
> to them, and I don't see anything wrong with them other than the
> encoding issue. But of course, XML is a strong contender if there's ever
> going to be a change.
>
> However, that would require a lot more re-writing than just switching
> over to UTF-8 while keeping the format, I would assume (since you'd have
> to change both the format and the encoding)? As far as I can tell from
> what (little) I've read on the subject, UTF-8 is largely "backwards
> compatible" with ISO-8859-1, so in my mind it seems like a pretty
> straight-forward swap for Alkacon - if they ever wanted
> to. Eventually, I guess it's up to Sun if they want to change the
> specification. I just thought it would be cool if Alkacon stepped up and
> set an example, OpenCms being a multilanguage CMS and all.
>
> I was considering whether or not to extend/modify the OpenCms core in
> order to read .properties-values as UTF-8 (probably something like
> you've done already), but for now, my method is sufficient, so I think
> I'll put that idea on ice for now.
>
> Thanks for your reply, comforting to know I'm not the only one who's
> been struggling with the properties encoding.
>
> All the best,
> Paul
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org
> [mailto:opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org] *On Behalf Of *Christian
> Steinert
> *Sent:* 30. september 2009 18:55
> *To:* The OpenCms mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [opencms-dev] Problems with labels in
> workplace_ru.properties
>
> Paul-Inge Flakstad wrote:
>> I was a bit mistaken in my last post. By specification, all .properties files are Latin-1 encoded, and when loading from (or saving to) a stream, ISO-8859-1 character encoding is used. All characters that cannot be represented in this encoding must be Unicode escaped.
>>
>> This is probably old news for the more experienced developers, but to me, it's news. I'm glad to finally have learned the cause of my "mysterios" encoding problem, but bewildered adn confounded by the facts... Why why WHY???
>>
> At some point I hat also stumbled over this one - horrible, isn't
> it? In the end I just wrote my own property file loader method that
> pushes the property data string through the native2ascii
> implementation from GNU Classpath and then loads the resulting
> property bundle.
>
> I don't know why Sun never fixed the property file spec by adding an
> optional encoding signature, but somehow they never did.
>> Further reading: http://www.thoughtsabout.net/blog/archives/000044.html
>>
>> Guys at Alkacon: Any possibility that, in a future release, you would consider disregarding the specification for .properties files, and use UTF-8 instead? In my opinion, OpenCms would become more user-friendly if you did - at least when dealing with multilanguage sites that should support use of characters not specified in the Latin-1 set.
>>
> Maybe it would be best to switch to XML-based resource bundles at
> some point. I like the simplicity of the old-fashioned property
> format, but since their encoding behavior is definded like that,
> it's maybe best to leave them aside rather than bending the spec
> oficially.
>
> Best Regards
> Christian
>
>
>
>> Cheers,
>> Paul
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org
>>> [mailto:opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org] On Behalf Of
>>> Paul-Inge Flakstad
>>> Sent: 30. september 2009 15:42
>>> To: The OpenCms mailing list
>>> Subject: Re: [opencms-dev] Problems with labels in
>>> workplace_ru.properties
>>>
>>> Self-replying :)
>>>
>>> Given that my assumptions are correct:
>>> The workplace_xx.properties files are read during the
>>> workplace initialization, using the default encoding of the
>>> JVM, which typically depends upon the locale and charset of
>>> the underlying operating system.
>>>
>>> In my case, the workplace_ru.properties file is read as
>>> ISO-8859-1, and as a result, no strings fetched using
>>> CmsJspActionElement#label(String) make any sense - it's all gibberish.
>>>
>>> The solution is something along the lines of this:
>>>
>>> public String labelUnicode(String key) {
>>> String jvmDefaultCharsetName =
>>> Charset.defaultCharset().displayName();
>>> try {
>>> return new
>>> String(this.label(key).getBytes(jvmDefaultCharsetName), "UTF-8");
>>> } catch (java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
>>> return new String("[Default label: " +
>>> this.label(key) + "]");
>>> }
>>> }
>>>
>>> This seems to be working just perfectly. I don't have to
>>> think about character encoding since utf-8 is the default
>>> encoding all over OpenCms (I can just leave the
>>> "content-encoding" property blank), and I can even mix
>>> special characters from different languages all in one
>>> .properties file.
>>>
>>> I would even propose to add a method, like the one suggested
>>> above, to CmsJspActionElement. (I'm pretty sure I attempted
>>> every single possibility within OpenCms to get the correct
>>> strings from my workplace_ru.properties returned, using the
>>> "standard" label(String), but never got anything but strange
>>> symbols. If someone for some reason _needs_ to have their JVM
>>> default encoding set to ISO-8859-1, while at the same time
>>> supporting a multilanguage OpenCms system, there seems to be
>>> no method native to OpenCms that enables getting correct
>>> russian (for example) strings from the workplace_xx.properties files.)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Paul
>>>
>>> PS: I know I should propably set the JVM default encoding
>>> manually to UTF-8 instead, but I'm unsure of any possible
>>> side-effects. So until then, this is a pretty decent workaround.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org
>>>> [mailto:opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Paul-Inge Flakstad
>>>> Sent: 29. september 2009 22:57
>>>> To: The OpenCms mailing list
>>>> Subject: [opencms-dev] Problems with labels in
>>>>
>>> workplace_ru.properties
>>>
>>>> Hi all
>>>>
>>>> In one of our multilanguage sites, Russian and English
>>>> content is mixed. Everything's working as expected (since
>>>> we're using UTF-8 encoding), but all the labels read from
>>>> workplace_ru.properties, using
>>>> CmsJspActionElement#label(String), is just gibberish...
>>>>
>>>> As a workaround, I created my own label(String, Locale)
>>>> method that does nothing more than simply read the value
>>>> straight out from the workplace_ru.properties file. When
>>>> using this method to access the labels, everything is OK, but
>>>> the .properties file is "parsed" upon each invocation, so
>>>> it's not desirable to keep using it.
>>>>
>>>> I've tried this:
>>>> Set the HTML charset to utf-8.
>>>> Set the JSP pageEncoding to utf-8.
>>>> Set the OpenCms <defaultcontentencoding> to utf-8.
>>>> I also checked the HTTP response header, it also says utf-8.
>>>>
>>>> Also, I been experimenting with different constellations of
>>>> encodings (including Cyrillic iso-8859-5), but to no avail.
>>>>
>>>> Can anyone please provide some insight?
>>>>
>>>> (Just so there's no mistake, I'm reading the labels from the
>>>> .properties file to use them as text on a web-page, not in
>>>> the OpenCms workplace. Things like "Photo:", "Published by "
>>>> and alike.)
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>>
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>>
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>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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Claus Priisholm, CodeDroids ApS
Phone: +45 48 22 46 46
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