With isCOBOL text messages displayed by the compiler, debugger and runtime can be customized or translated into the language of your choice.

iscobol.jar and isrun.jar contain text resource files for the following locales:

ar, de, el, en, es, fr, it, ja, nl, pt, ru, zh_CN, zh_TW

The above are ISO 639-1 codes listed on http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php optionally followed by an underscore and an ISO 3166-1 country code listed at http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/english_country_names_and_code_elements.htm

The messages that are currently localized are:

username=User Name
password=Password
change_password=Change Password
new_password=New Password
retype_password=Retype Password
open=Open
print=Print
save=Save
quit=Quit
page=Page
open=Browse for folder
undo=Undo
redo=Redo
cut=Cut
copy=Copy
paste=Paste
delete=Delete
selectall=Select all
ef_out_of_range_msg_part1=Please enter a value between
ef_out_of_range_msg_part2=and
ef_input_required_msg=Entry required!
ef_error_msg_title=!!!
ef_error_number=Number required
msg_yes=&Yes
msg_no=&No
msg_ok=&OK
msg_cancel=&Cancel

These messages can be customized with the following steps:

1. Extract the default language text resource file or the file you are customizing with the following command:

where xx is one of the codes listed above. For example, to extract the default message file

To customize the English language message file

2. Edit the file. If you are adding a new language, then rename the file to IscobolMessages_xx.properties replacing xx with the appropriate code(s) from the websites listed above.

3. Add the text resource file to a new jar file with the following command:

replacing xx with the appropriate code.

4. Make sure your new jar file precedes isrun.jar or iscobol.jar in the class path used when running a program. For example,

If you prefer, you can replace the text resource file in isrun.jar and/or iscobol.jar with the jar -u option. For example, to replace the English messages in isrun.jar use the following command:

Note that text resource files must be written using ISO 8859-1 encoding. To insert characters that cannot be represented by the ISO encoding, Unicode escape sequences must be used. The escape sequence is composed by \u followed by the utf-16 representation of the character (the same you would use with nx syntax in the cobol source).

See How do I use text that has been translated into other languages in my screens and messages? for more information.

1. How do I use text that has been translated into other languages in my screens and messages?