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Development Guide
Localizing BlackBerry device applications
Multilanguage support
The BlackBerry® Integrated Development Environment includes a resource mechanism for creating string resources. The
Localization API is part of the net.rim.device.api.i18n package. MIDP applications do not support localization.
TheBlackBerry Integrated Development Environment stores resources for a locale in a ResourceBundle object. A
ResourceBundleFamily object contains a collection of ResourceBundles, which groups the resources for an
application. The application can switch languages, depending on the locale of the BlackBerry device user, without requiring new
resource bundles.
You can use the BlackBerry Integrated Development Environment to compile each resource bundle into a separately compiled .cod
file. You can load the appropriate .cod files onto BlackBerry devices with the other .cod files for the application.
Resources are organized in a hierarchy based on inheritance. If a string is not defined in a locale, a string from the next closest
locale is used.
Files required for localization
File required for
Description
localization
Resource header file
This file defines descriptive keys for each localized string. When the
BlackBerry® Integrated Development Environment builds a project, it
creates a resource interface with Resource appended to the .rrh file
name. For example, if you create AppName.rrh, the interface is
named AppNameResource.
Resource content file
This file maps resource keys to string values for the root (global) locale.
(root locale)
It has the same name as the resource header file.
Resource content file
This file maps resource keys to string values for specific locales
(specific locales)
(language and country). Files have the same name as the resource
header file, followed by an underscore (_) and the language code, and
then, optionally, an underscore (_) and country code.
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Localizing BlackBerry device applications
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Example
AppName.rrh
AppName.rrc
AppName_en.rrc
AppName_en_GB.rrc
AppName_fr.rrc
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