Japanese username and user.home

Question

Hi,
I'm using the Java plugin 1.3.1 on Win2000 and XP, and I have the following problem:
I'm logging on a Windows machine using a japanese username. The user.home directory happens to include Japanese encoded characters. Because of this, the Java plugin is kind of going mad. It displays question marks instead of Japanese. For example, in the java console :
User home directory(<-this is actually correctly displayed in Japanese): C:\Documents And Settings\???
Then, it displays tons of 'NullPointerException' (probably because it can't find the user home directory correctly).
I would like to know if this is a bug in the plugin, a limitation in the Java API or something else.
Is there a way to overcome this problem ?
Thanks
Chris

Answer 1

Hi
I've found somekind of a work around, but it might mess up your windows security (if you use it).
With JRE 1.3.x, you can override your USERPROFILE variable to set it to, eg c:\temp.
This is the variable used by the JRE to determine the user.home value. Obviously, this redirects everything which happens in your user home directory (c:\documents and settings\xxxxxx) to happen in the new directory.
With JRE 1.4.x, you can set USER_JPI_PROFILE. Java will then take this variable to use it as user.home, and not the USERPROFILE variable.
I hope this can help you, it helped me a little (at least the JRE can start up).
I also found out, that eg would you be willing to load a CJK font via Font.createFont, that it tries to access the java.io.tempdir. This is also interpreted incorrectly (since it is located under your USERPROFILE directory in Windows 2000). You can override this one to in java itself to make font loading correct.
I hope this helps
If I find anything else, I'll let you know
Greetz
Reinhart