## Localizing the Help Presentation

The JavaHelp system viewer generally inherits the locale from the application. For information about how applications are internationalized, see the internationalization section of The Java Tutorial at:

    http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/index.html

The culturally dependent data (for example, messages and labels) for the presentation components is contained in the property file named `javahelp.properties` in the `javax.help.resources` package.

If the locale of the help viewer is different from the locale of the application, the locale of the HelpBroker can be set using the `HelpBroker.setLocale()` method. Setting the locale of the HelpBroker sets the locale for all subordinate components. If you do not use the HelpBroker, set the locale of the JHelp* components directly using their `setLocal()` methods.

### Data Input in the Viewer

There are two places in the JavaHelp system GUI where culturally dependent input is required: Index Find and Search Query.

In both cases, platform-specific input methods are used. Once text is entered in the Index Find or Search Query text boxes, additional locale-based processing is activated (usually by pressing the Enter key).

In the Index Find case, the input text is searched for within the index entries using locale-based comparisons. The locale used in Index Find is the locale of the Index navigator - usually the locale of the application, unless overridden using the `JHelpIndexNavigator.setLocale()` method.

In the Search Query case, the input text and the locale of the Search navigator are passed to a `HelpSearch` class. The `HelpSearch` class tokenizes the query text into words using the locale-specific tokenizer. The locale used in Search Query is the locale of the Search navigator - usually the locale of the application, unless overridden using the `HelpBroker.setLocale` or `JHelpSearchNavigator.setLocale` methods.

See also:

  Localizing Help Information
  Localizing Helpsets
  Localizing XML Data
  Localizing HTML Data
  Localization and Fonts
  Localizing the Full-Text Search Database