Question

I have localised my app by adding the correct resource files for various European languages / dialects.

I have the required folder in my project: ./res/com/demo/localization

It contains the required files e.g. Demo.rrh, Demo.rrc, Demo_de.rrc etc.

I want to add support for 2 Chinese dialects, and I have the translations in an Excel file. On iPhone, they are referred to by the codes zh_TW & zh_CM. Following the pattern with German, I created 2 extra files called Demo_zh_TW.rrc & Demo_zh_CN.rrc.

I opened file Demo_zh_CN.rrc using Eclipse’s text editor, and pasted in line of the Chinese translation using the normal resource file format:

• START_LOCATION#0="开始位置";

When I tried to save the file, I got Eclipse’s error about the Cp1252 character encoding:

Save could not be completed.

Reason:
Some characters cannot be mapped using "Cp1252" character encoding.
Either change the encoding or remove the characters which are not
supported by the "Cp1252" character encoding.

It seems the Eclipse editor will accept the Chinese characters, but the resource tool expects that these characters must be saved in the resource file as Java Unicode /u encoding.

---

How do I add language support for these 2 regions without manually copy n pasting in each string?

Is there maybe a tool that I can use to Java Unicode /u encode the strings from Excel so they can be saved in Code page 1252 Latin chars only?

Answer 1

I’m not aware of any readily available tools for working with BlackBerry’s peculiar localization style.

Here’s a snippet of Java-SE code I use to convert the UTF-8 strings I get for use with BlackBerry:

private static String unicodeEscape(String value, CharsetEncoder encoder) {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    for(char c : value.toCharArray()) {
        if(encoder.canEncode(c)) {
            sb.append(c);
        } else {
            sb.append("\\u");
            sb.append(hex4(c));
        }
    }
    return sb.toString();
}

private static String hex4(char c) {
    String ret = Integer.toHexString(c);
    while(ret.length() < 4) {
        ret = "0" + ret;
    }
    return ret;
}

Call unicodeEscape with the 8859-1 encoder with Charset.forName("ISO-8859-1").newEncoder()