The first release of Messages is available. Messages is a open source framework to make internationalization easier for Java applications.

Messages differs from the typical i18n mechanisms, by supporting locales for threads and bundles can be associated with different packages. This allows the usage of different bundles for different parts of the application like plugins, installers or logging. Bundles can be managed and associated with packages without any changes in the code. This makes bundle management and refactoring much easier than with other solutions. Messages supports global locales for client applications written in Swing or SWT and thread local ones for serverside web applications.

Cintoo Messages is Apache 2.0 licensed.

Hmmmm, hmmmm, ok. How to use cintoo is pretty well documented, but I'm not sure why I should use it. I would suggest a few key examples of scenario's where cintoo solves problems more elegant than the standard solutions.

You're right, I'm working on that. Messages is not big but solves some small but annoying problems.

After doing a big i18n project some problems occured.

1.) The project had several bundles and it was tiresome to remember the bundle for the class. With Messages you only use format(this, key) and get the correct bundle automatically.

2.) You can then split, merge and add bundle files for different parts of your application, without changes in the code.

3.) Helps with thread locale usage of locales and global locales. Sure can be done by hand, but Messages makes it easier.

4.) I'm working on a quality assurance tool for i18n keys and texts for the 1.0 final release which helps with i18n QA.

From my feeling, people do i18n still the way they did 20 years ago. I hope Messages helps to explore new ways of doing i18n (AOP, IoC, ...).

thanks for looking :-)

As long as you are implementing a new ResourceBundle factory, you ought to offer some alternate ResourceBundle implementations. I wrote an XmlResourceBundle for a project I am working on and found it to be very helpful. Especially since XML lets you embed legible I18N text instead of the escaping required by Java properties file.

As long as you are implementing a new ResourceBundle factory, you ought to offer some alternate ResourceBundle implementations. I wrote an XmlResourceBundle for a project I am working on and found it to be very helpful. Especially since XML lets you embed legible I18N text instead of the escaping required by Java properties file.

Very good idea, if you want to contibute code, I'm open :-) Otherwise I see what I can come up with myself, the properties format always kept me wanting something more powerfull.

Thanks
bye
-stephan
http://stephan.cintoo.org