I mean something like this:

<bundle name>[_<locale>][_<platform>].properties, where platform is 'win', 'osx' or 'linux' (splitting linux into kde and gnome if needed)

This would allow for complete localization of accelerators: for example on windows the common accelerator to exit an application is Ctrl-X, while on OSX its Command-Q

This means translation of 'shortcut' to ctrl for Windows and meta for OSX is not enough.

I remember seeing something like this on a blog a while ago, but I don't seem to be able to find it.

I see what you mean, this solution isn't complete. That said, it's better than the current situation and may suffice for some people. It certainly did on my current project which is why I made the changes.

I'm planning on looking into solutions for Mac specific commands (ie quit being in the apple menu) over the next few weeks so at the same time I'll look into a more complete solution for this problem also.

Jonny

• The use of the 'shortcut' modifier in the command label property signifies the platform specific shortcut modifier, as defined by the platform specific Toolkit, should be used. This is equivalent to ctrl on windows and meta on MacOS.
• The provided properties files have been modified to use shortcut rather than the platform specific ctrl.
• Predefined platform variants of win, macosx and linux have been defined and the default locale is modified accordingly. This allows, for example, a macosx specific resource bundle properties file to defined the exit command label as 'Quit'
• The provided bundle properties file have a macosx variant file defined that specifies the Quit label. The actual text was obtained by changing the locale on a Mac machine and using the translated Quit label in Safari.
• In order to overcome a problem in the bundle search algorithm used by ResourceBundle.getBundle an extension of org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource is given that allows language specific bundles with a variant, but without a country, to be used. Note that this problem with ResourceBundle was a know bug in Sun's bug tracker and a solution was provided for Java6, which we obviously can't use. The solution provided is simple but does the job.

The same result could be achieved without the introduction of the shortcut modifier or the use of the ResourceBundleMessageSource extension. However, that solution would require a much larger number of properties files many with much the same content, violating DRY principles.