Netbeans 9 - Print Unicode Characters

Question

With Netbeans 9:

Product Version: Apache NetBeans IDE 9.0 (Build incubator-netbeans-release-334-on-20180708)
Java: 1.8.0_181; Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 25.181-b13
Runtime: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 1.8.0_181-b13
System: Windows 10 version 10.0 running on amd64; UTF-8; en_EN (nb)

I want to be able to print:

String text = "你好！";
System.out.println(text);

The result is instead:

--- exec-maven-plugin:1.5.0:exec (default-cli) @ JavaApplication1 ---
???

I already added -J-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to the /etc/netbeans.conf, added also to the VM options in configuration. Sources encoding option also set to UTF-8. No problems with the past versions of Netbeans, here I found no way to display UTF-8 characters.

Which way can I do?

Answer 1

Updated on 9/8/21 to note that this solution does not work with NetBeans 12.x releases. See NetBeans 12 UTF-8 Chinese output with Maven projects

---

For a Maven application created in NetBeans 9.0 using Java 8 there are three actions needed to get Chinese characters to render correctly in the Output window, the first two of which you were already doing:

1. Add -J-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to the property netbeans_default_options in file etc/netbeans.conf, and then restart NetBeans.
2. From the Projects panel set {project} > Properties > Sources > Encoding to UTF-8.
3. In the application call System.setOut(new PrintStream(System.out, true, "UTF8")); so that the print stream used when calling System.out.println() supports UTF-8 encoding.

It's also worth noting some changes that are not necessary:

• There's no need to select a specific font in the Output window (Tools > Options > Miscellaneous > Output > Font) since the default font of Monospaced works fine. Selecting another font may actually cause problems if it does not support Chinese characters (e.g. Arial).
• There's no need to specify file.encoding=UTF-8 in {project} > Properties > Run > VM Options.
• There's no need to specify anything about the project's encoding in pom.xml.

This is the code:

package com.unthreading.mavenchinesechars;

import java.io.PrintStream;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;

public class ChineseChars {

public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {

    System.out.println("System.getProperty(\"file.encoding\"): " + System.getProperty("file.encoding"));
    System.out.println("Charset.defaultCharset(): " + Charset.defaultCharset());
    System.out.println("System.getProperty(\"java.version\"): " + System.getProperty("java.version"));
    
    String text = "你好！"; 
    System.out.println(text); // <<<======================= Fails!       
    System.setOut(new PrintStream(System.out, true, "UTF8")); // Essential!
    System.out.println(text); // <<<======================= Works!       
}
}

This is pom.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.unthreading</groupId>
    <artifactId>MavenChineseChars</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <properties>
        <maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
        <maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
    </properties>
</project>

This is the Output in NetBeans:

cd D:\NB82\MavenChineseChars; JAVA_HOME=C:\\Java\\jdk1.8.0_181 M2_HOME=C:\\apache-maven-3.6.0 cmd /c "\"\"C:\\apache-maven-3.6.0\\bin\\mvn.cmd\" -Dexec.args=\"-classpath %classpath com.unthreading.mavenchinesechars.ChineseChars\" -Dexec.executable=C:\\Java\\jdk1.8.0_181\\bin\\java.exe -Dmaven.ext.class.path=C:\\NetBeans9\\java\\maven-nblib\\netbeans-eventspy.jar org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:1.5.0:exec\""
Running NetBeans Compile On Save execution. Phase execution is skipped and output directories of dependency projects (with Compile on Save turned on) will be used instead of their jar artifacts.
Scanning for projects...

-----------------< com.unthreading:MavenChineseChars >------------------
Building MavenChineseChars 1.0-SNAPSHOT
--------------------------------[ jar ]---------------------------------

--- exec-maven-plugin:1.5.0:exec (default-cli) @ MavenChineseChars ---
System.getProperty("file.encoding"): Cp1252
Charset.defaultCharset(): windows-1252
System.getProperty("java.version"): 1.8.0_181
???
你好！
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUILD SUCCESS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total time:  1.021 s
Finished at: 2018-12-12T18:24:12-05:00
------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the Output, note that:

• The Chinese characters do not render correctly unless System.setOut(new PrintStream(System.out, true, "UTF8")); is called first.
• The Chinese characters render even though System.getProperty("file.encoding") for the project returns "Cp1252" rather than "UTF-8":