HI!
for reading text file, i think what you need is knowing right
encoding.
eg. suppose it is UTF-16:

[code]
FileInputStream fileStream = new FileInputStream("yourFile");
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new
InputStreamReader(fileStream , "UTF-16"));
String line = reader.readLine();
[/code]

now you have correct rappresentation of your String.
i hope i helped you.

If you display characters in a GUI, you just use Unicode, and it the
GUI's problem to display them.  The only tricky part is selecting
fonts which support the Unicode characters you are using.
See http://mindprod.com/applets/fontshower.html

If you display characters on the console, it typically uses an 8-bit
encoding of some kind.  See http://mindprod.com/applets/fileio.html
for how to convert to various 8-bit encodings.

The default encoding should be suitable.

Lie to Windows and tell it you live in Japan to find out what that
default encoding is.

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/encoding.html
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

There are two ways to approach I/O.  One is to use the system default
character encoding.  The other is to specify a character encoding.  If
you've used the system default character encoding, then it would
probably work on a Japanese system with Japanese characters.  If you've
specified an encoding, then it probably won't.

You should always prefer specifying an encoding when possible.  However,
the encoding you use has to match the encoding of the "metadata text
files" you are reading.  If you can't control those, then your choice is
made for you.  You need to find out from whomever writes these files
what encoding they use.

You can't draw characters to the console that aren't in the character
set for that console.  So you'll either need to convert your code to a
GUI, or give up on drawing Japanese characters on a non-Japanese
terminal.

I don't know what MS Mincho is.  Sorry.

Sure you can save it.  Again, you can save it either in a specific
encoding, or with the platform default.  If the text contains characters
that can't be encoded with that encoding, they will appear as '?'
characters.

the first thing is to find out how this  file is encoded.

Possibilities include:

Cp930        Japanese Katakana-Kanji mixed with 4370 UDC, superset
of 5026
Cp939        Japanese Latin Kanji mixed with 4370 UDC, superset of
5035
Cp942        Japanese (OS/2) superset of 932
Cp942C        variant of Cp942. Japanese (OS/2) superset of Cp932
Cp943        Japanese (OS/2) superset of Cp932 and Shift-JIS.
Cp943C        Variant of Cp943. Japanese (OS/2) superset of Cp932
and Shift-JIS.
Cp33722        IBM-eucJP - Japanese (superset of 5050)

JIS        Japanese
JIS0201        JIS 0201, Japanese
JIS0212        JIS 0212, Japanese
JISAutoDetect        Detects and converts from Shift-JIS, EUC-JP,
ISO- 2022 JP (conversion to Unicode only)
JIS_X0201        Japanese
JIS_X0212-1990f        Japanese

Shift_JIS        Shift JIS. Japanese. A Microsoft code that
extends csHalfWidthKatakana to include kanji by adding a second byte
when the value of the first byte is in the ranges 81-9F or E0-EF.

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/encoding.html

I am working on a little utility called EncodingRecogniser which
should help you. All it does is display any given file presuming any
of Java's supported encodings, telling you about BOMs.

I hope to post it some time tonight.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

JR <jriker1@yahoo.com> wrote in news:1183415031.233708.186300
@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:

First, I would recommend that you spend some time learning the difference
between character sets (e.g. unicode), encodings (e.g. UTF-8) and fonds (e.g.
MS Mincho).  Several web pages that I've found useful for this include:

http://czyborra.com/
http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/codepages.html
http://www.unicode.org/
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2044.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2781.html

Cheers!
GRB