The Internationalization enhancements for Java SE 7 include the following:
Early versions of the Java SE 7 release added support for Unicode 5.1.0. The final version of the Java SE 7 release supports Unicode 6.0.0. Unicode 6.0.0 is a major version of the Unicode Standard and adds support for over 2000 additional characters, as well as support for properties and data files.
The Java Tutorial has a new section that discusses Unicode.
Currencies are identified by their ISO 4217 codes. These codes maintained by an external agency and are released independent of the Java SE platform. As of Java SE 7, it is possible to accommodate new currencies without requiring a new release of the JDK.
To supersede the default currency at runtime, create a
properties file named
<JAVA_HOME>/lib/currency.properties. This file
contains the key/value pairs of the ISO 3166 country code, and the
ISO 4217 currency data. The value part consists of three
comma-separated ISO 4217 currency values: an alphabetic code, a
numeric code, and a minor unit. Any lines beginning with the hash
character, #, are treated as comment lines. For
example:
# Sample currency property for Japan JP=JPZ,999,0
The new API for this feature includes the following methods, all in
the Currency class:
The default locale can be independently set for two types of uses:
the format setting is used for formatting resources, and
the display setting is used in menus and dialogs. The new
getDefault(Locale.Category) method takes a
Locale.Category parameter. Passing the
FORMAT enum to the method returns the default locale
for formatting resources. Similarly, passing the
DISPLAY enum returns the default locale used by the
UI. The
setDefault(Locale.Category, Locale) method is used to set the
locale for the specified category. The no-argument
getDefault method returns the DISPLAY
default value.
On Microsoft Windows, these default values are initialized according to the "Standard and Formats" and "Display Language" settings in the Windows control panel.
The Locale class has been updated to implement
identifiers interchangeable with BCP 47 (IETF BCP 47, "Tags for
Identifying Languages"), with support for the LDML (UTS#35,
"Unicode Locale Data Markup Language") BCP 47-compatible extensions
for locale data exchange.
The following nested classes have been added to the
Locale class in this release:
Locale
instance and to configure that instance using setter methods.The following methods have been added to the Locale
class:
The following constants have been added to the LOCALE
class:
For more information, see the Creating a Locale and BCP 47 Extensions lessons in the Java Tutorial.
The NumericShaper class is used to convert Latin-1 (European)
digits to other Unicode decimal digits. For the Java SE 7 release, the
NumericShaper.Range
enum has been added to represent a Unicode range of a script having its
own decimal digits. The following methods, using the
NumericShaper.Range enum have been
added to the Java SE 7 release:
defaultContext as the starting context.
For more information, see the Converting Latin Digits to Other Unicode Digits lesson in the Java Tutorial.
The Regular Expressions pattern matching functionality has been expanded
to support Unicode 6.0. You can match Unicode code points using
either the \u or the \x escape sequence.
The Unicode Support page in the Java Tutorial has more information.
