VisualUL has been designed so that it is easy to customize it by changing the messages, the titles and even the icons used in the program. This customization is based on the ResourceBundle of JDK. Concerning this point, there is a limitation which comes from Java, namely, the resource bundle uses an input stream, which is not a Reader object in java, so that the resource bundle file is in ascii. However characters defined as \uXXXX with XXXX the hexadecimal code of a unicode character should work.

How to customize VisualUL?
The problem when one deals with configuration files is that one has to maintain them, in the sense that one should not forget the resource names and update the resource file if a new version appears. In VisualUL, a default resource file is produced from the classes themselves. What the user has to do is to replace the default settings by his own settings.
To do so, run:

java Alex.util.JDefaultResource UL.VisualUL
java Alex.util.JDefaultResource UL.gui.DataDialog VisualUL.properties
java Alex.util.JDefaultResource UL.gui.InstanceWindow VisualUL.properties

The effect of this is to create VisualUL.properties and then to append information to this file for different classes which need information. The user will see string definition, which are obvious to change because he will have the default value. There will be buttons, menu and menu item settings. There, the default values will guide the user. The file is also auto commented.

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