In this presentation we introduce the pluggable service provider interface and associated API used to deploy and develop charset encoders and decoders within the Java platform. The background and rationale for the introduction of pluggable charset support within the Java platform is detailed.

The presentation includes real case studies, including real world code examples, usage idioms and approaches to development of coders. Simple single byte coders, multibyte fixed with coders and complex stateful code examples are explored. Patterns for re-use, footprint conservation and performance improvements are outlined. Issues such as surrogate support are described.

In addition to approaches of designing and writing charset en/de-coders the presentation gives examples of direct usage of clients of this API. Also roadmaps showing the intended bundlings and de-bundlings of converters within the Java platform starting with J2SE version 1.4 are presented.