UTF-8 Support w/ Java and Console

Using UTF-8 can still be difficult, as I experienced recently when I wrote an ASCII table in Java using UTF-8 box characters. The package is published now (skb-asciitable), and here is how I got UTF-8 support working.

 

 Javac

The java compiler might need a reminder to use UTF-8. The option -encoding UTF-8 should do the trick.

 

 Javadoc

Javadoc has 3 options for dealing with UTF-8 characters. encoding for the source (i.e. reading UTF-8 encoded java files), docencoding for the output (i.e. the html encoding) and charset for the output (i.e. to tell the browser what character set to use). All of these options need to be set to UTF-8. The ANT task for Javadoc has those options. So using encoding="UTF-8" docencoding="UTF-8" charset="UTF-8" should create UTF-8 html.

 

 Editor

Editing java files requires an editor that can handle UTF-8 and being configured to do so. Otherwise all UTF-8 characters will be scrambled. In Eclipse, one can set the respective file, the project or the complete workspace to use UTF-8 encoding. The default on Windows is CP1252, so make sure to change that before opening any UTF-8 file. Simply change the text file encoding on the resource. This will also change the output of the Eclipse console to UTF (in Juno and Keppler). Other editors will have their specific way to configure for UTF file handling.

Console

Console settings depend very much on the operating system and the terminal program used. In Windows (using cmd as shell), change the code page using this command: chcp 65001. In Cygwin, use a terminal that supports UTF-8, for instance the popular mintty. For both, the font Lucida Console supports almost all UTF-8 box drawing characters. Unix and Apple systems are usually better for UTF support.

JVM

Running a java program with UTF output might require to set the JVM to UTF as well. -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 should do the trick.