Chapter 9 Localizing Communications Express

Communications Express allows you to localize Mail, Calendar, Address Book, and Options as per your requirements.

• Calendar and Options

• Languages that use Characters Outside the ASCII Range

• Mail

• Adding Locales

• Address Book

Calendar and Options

To localize text, you need to change the i18n.properties file that is located in <domain-dir>/<locale> directory. If the deployment is configured to work with multiple domains and multiple locales, then a directory by that domain name is created under <domain-dir>

For example, if there is a domain called example.com, perform the following steps.

• Create <domain-dir>/example.com.

• Create directories for each supported locale (en_US, ja, de_DE, fr_FR, and so on) under that domain, copy i18n.properties to the domain, and change it accordingly.

• Copy <domain-dir>/<locale>/i18n.properties to <domain-dir>/example.com/<locale> directory.

Date/Time Formats for Calendar

The localization of the Date/Time formats for Calendar should be performed by constructing locale-specific patterns for certain symbols, delimiters and hard-coded strings that are enclosed in single quotes. These symbols are converted into locale specific strings by Communications Express.

For more information on localizing date and time formats in calendar, see Date/Time Formats for Calendar.

Characters that are displayed in the table above are treated as quoted text. These characters appear in the formatted text even if they are not enclosed within single quotes.

The number of symbol letters you specify also determines the format. For example, if the “zz” pattern results in “PDT,” then the “zzzz” pattern generates “Pacific Daylight Time.” Date/Time Formats for Calendar summarizes these rules.

Languages that use Characters Outside the ASCII Range

You may want to use the native2ascii utility provided by JDK to convert non-ascii characters into escaped unicode values. This utility is available at <jdk-install-dir>/bin

To use the native2ascii utility, enter non-ascii characters for the corresponding values in the properties file and save it.

Use the command, native2ascii -encloding <native_encoding> <src_filename> <target_filename>

where,

native_encoding represents the encoding used to create the source file, src_filename represents the source file and target_filename represents the i18n.properties file.

Mail

Communications Express allows you to localize any feature of Mail. Different pages can be created for different languages. When you create language-specific static pages, you need to group them in subdirectories under the main document directory. The code automatically detects the client’s language preference and fetches the pages from the appropriate subdirectory.

When you change common sections for static pages, you must make the changes in multiple locale (languages) directories, if modifications are desired across languages (for example, if changes are required to modify JavaScript behavior). Conversely, you can also make language-specific modifications selectively throughout the application.

Specific Locales

Mail lists the specific locales and their abbreviations that are supported by Communications Express services. The default language is English.

Mail shows the changes to be made to the ru/i18n.js file for modifying the charset in the i18n.js file.

Example 9–1 Modifying the charset in the i18n Resource File

    i18n['client charset'] = 'iso-8859-5'
    i18n['http charset'] = 'iso-8859-5'
    i18n['fontface'] = 'PrimaSans BT,Verdana,sans-serif'
    i18n['fontface1'] = i18n['fontface']
    i18n['fontface2'] = 'Times New Roman,Times,serif'
    i18n['fontface3'] = 'Courier New,Courier,mono'
    i18n['nbsp'] = ' '

Communications Express allows you to customize text that is displayed on web pages. This text is both customizable and localizable. The system also allows you to configure text on a per domain basis.

Adding Locales

To add a locale, perform the following steps.

• Edit the uwcdomainconfig.properties file. This file is available in the <uwc-deployed-path>/WEB-INF/domain directory>

• Add a keyword for the new locale that needs to be added. For example, if you need to add a new locale, “Afrikaans”

Example 9–2 Adding a keyword for the new locale

supportedLanguages=en;es;de;fr;ja;ko;zh-CN;zh-TW;Afrikaans

• Add a localized string for the locale name in different locales. This could be done by adding a new line in i18n.properties file of each locale. For example, let us add a key in i18n.properties file for en locale.

Example 9–3 Adding a localized string for the locale name

uwc-common-options-preferredLanguage-Afrikaans=Afrkaans Locale

Changing Source Encoding

Some mail clients do not set the encoding type in MIME header before sending emails. Communications Express allows users to view a message in a different character encoding.

For example, Arabic has a number of character encoding (CP-1256, Arabic DOS, UTF8, Nafitha, Sakhr, ISO-8859, MacArabic). Communications Express allows users to change the browser encoding to be able to view the mail that they receive in different character encoding.

To Enable Character Encoding

1. Change directory to <uwc-deployed-path>/webmail/ directory.

2. Edit main.js and uncomment the following line:

   //var srcchars = new Array('standard','iso-8859-6','windows-1256',
   'utf-8','big5','gb2312');

   You can also add or remove character encoding that you want to support in the Array data type. For example:

   var srcchars = new Array('standard','iso-8859-6','windows-1256','big5','gb2312',
   'windows-1252','iso-8859-7');

3. Restart the web container on which Communications Express is deployed for these changes to take effect.

   ---

   Note –

   Users need to clear the browser cache so that the latest modifications made to the main.js file are picked up from the server instead of the browser's cache.

   ---

Enabling Character Encoding in a Multi-tier Deployment

For multi-tier deployments, these steps should be performed in the front end directory (<uwc-deployed-path>/webmail/) of the Communications Express installation.

Address Book

To localize address book, the XML file that needs to be modified is the dictionary- <locale>.xml file that is located in the <uwc-deployed-path>/WEB-INF/ui/html/abs directory.

Customizing Address Book for a Specific Locale

You can customize the Address Book User Interface either for a specific locale and not under a specific domain and also for a locale under a specific domain.

To Customize Address Book User Interface for a Locale and Not Under a Specific Domain

1. Create a directory with the locale name (For example, ja under <uwc-deployed-path>/WEB-INF/ui/html/abs)

2. Copy all files from <uwc-deployed-path>/WEB-INF/ui/html/abs to <uwc-deployed-path>/WEB-INF/ui/html/abs/<locale>

3. Make the required changes in XSL files as explained in the previous sections.

To Customize Address Book for a Locale Under a Specific Domain

1. Create a directory with <domain>/<locale> (For example, siroe.com/ja) under <uwc-deployed-path>/WEB-INF/ui/html

2. Copy all files from <uwc-deployed-path>/WEB-INF/ui/html/abs to ..../abs/<locale>

3. Make the required changes in .xsl files as explained in Chapter 7, Customizing General Features in Address Book.