Why no font.properties.zh_HK?

Question

In my JRE (1.4.1_06)'s lib directory, there is a font.properties.zh file (for S. Chinese) and a font.properties.zh_TW file (for Taiwan T. Chinese), but no font.properties.zh_HK file (for Hong Kong T. Chinese). Anybody have any idea why?
Also, does anyone know if it is legal to copy font.properties.zh_TW to font.properties.zh_HK and redistribute it?
The reason I'm asking: On an English XP box, with the appropriate fonts installed, if I set user.language to zh or zh_TW, the app starts up and displays fine. However, if I use zh_HK I see a bunch of boxes instead of T. Chinese. Once I make the file copy I mentioned above, all is well. Seems odd that file is not included by default.
Thanks in advance for any insight.
Jamie

Answer 1

You probably have problems with both character encoding and font rendering.
The character encoding part: If you use the same resources for TW and HK, you can't use GBK and Big5 conversions on them. GBK and Big5 are incompatible encodings. Also, GBK is for simplified Chinese, and used in mainland China and in Singapore, but rarely in Hong Kong - it doesn't have all the traditional Chinese characters that are used in Hong Kong.
What you get from the translator may be encoded in Big5, or it may already be in ISO-8859-1 with Unicode escapes, the only encoding that the Properties class understands. If it's in Big5, use native2ascii to convert it. If it's ISO-8859-1 with Unicode escapes, leave it alone.
The font rendering part: With Chinese (Taiwan) selected, the font.properties lookup (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/intl/fontprop.html#loading ) uses the locale zh_TW and the encoding MS950, and finds font.properties.zh_TW. With Chinese (Hong Kong) it uses the locale zh_HK and the encoding MS950, and finds font.properties.zh. The zh file is for simplified Chinese, so you'll be able to render some, but not all of the Chinese characters used in Hong Kong. If you have HKSCS installed, the lookup uses zh_HK and MS950_HKSCS, and finds font.properties.MS950_HKSCS, which uses fonts appropriate for Hong Kong.
Your questions:
1. I don't know why the warnings are so strong. The only reason given is that "the package may affect private use characters", which could be a serious problem for somebody who seriously uses Chinese, but won't impact your occasional testing. You may want to check with Microsoft.
2. That's what the support in JRE 1.4.1 and up is designed for. The only problem is that the font.properties files aren't consistently named - some are named using locale IDs, others using encoding names, with the results described above.
3. To render Chinese characters in non-Chinese environments, you should upgrade to JRE 5.0 - its multilingual font rendering support uses fonts for all writing systems that it can find on the OS (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/intl/enhancements.html#desktop ). With JRE 1.4.1 or 1.4.2, you'd have to look for Chinese fonts yourself and request them using their physical font names. For more information, see http://java.sun.com/j2se/corejava/intl/reference/faqs/index.html#desktop-rendering.
4. JRE 1.4.1 is no longer supported, so info is hard to find. The documentation for JRE 1.4.2 mentions "HKSCS" at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/intl/locale.doc.html#jfc. I admit, that's not too clear. A bit more helpful is the name of the font.properties.MS950_HKSCS file. Finally, this reply is info from Sun.
Norbert