Specifying a Language

You use the Language Preferences page to tell the AnswerBook2 product to display its on-screen instructions and Help to you in a specific language, such as English. Changing your language preference does not automatically provide translated document collections; The documentation server displays document collections in the language in which they are created.

Some document collections look wrong unless the correct language preference is chosen. For example, a Japanese book will not display correctly unless the language preference is set to Japanese and the correct encoding (EUC or Shift-JIS) is selected.

To specify the language you want used for instructions and other on-screen information, on the Language Preferences page, select the icon that displays the language you want used and click Apply. For some languages, you might see an additional screen that asks you to choose a specific code set (or encoding) for that language. For more information about specifying a language encoding, see "Specifying Language Encoding".

You need to redefine your Language Preferences if you:

• Change documentation servers

• Change user names

• Switch browsers

Documentation server names are interpreted literally. For example, imaserver.eng.sun.com is considered to be a different server from imaserver.

The Language Preferences function is available only if your browser supports cookies and you have not turned off cookie support. Language Preferences expire after approximately one year and must be reset.

If your browser does not support cookies but allows you to set the browser's language and sends that information to the server, the AnswerBook2 interface uses the browser's language setting.

The AnswerBook2 interface defaults to the language of the server if any of the following conditions apply:

• You specify a language that the documentation server does not support.

• Your browser does not support cookies.

• Your browser does not send language information to the server.