Resource Bundles

Protege Resource Bundles

This articles describes Protege's support for internationalization using Java resource bundles.

The mechanisms described on this page are used to replace "fixed text" in the Protege user interface. Fixed text includes things like menu items, tab names, labels, and dialog titles. This is not a mechanism for authoring ontology and knowledge-base content in multiple languages simultaneously. Such support is entirely separate and documented elsewhere on this wiki.

Most of the fixed English text in the Protege user interface can be replaced with text from other languages. We also provide easy, standard ways for Protege plug-ins to provide internationalization support so that end-users can localize plug-in text. Currently, there are French and Russian resource bundles available for download from our Subversion repository:

French: protege_text_fr.properties

Russian: protege_text_ru.properties

If you develop a Protege resource bundle, please consider contributing it back to the Protege user community. We will be happy to host resource bundles in our source code repository.

Protege's support for internalization and localization is directly layered on top of Java's built-in support. Those already familiar with the way this support works will find the scheme described here easy to understand. Those not familiar with this support may wish to browse the Java Internationalization page on the Sun Microsystems web site for additional background information.