tool that is shipped with the JDK or by using a tool, such as po2prop, that manages the transformation from a bilingual localization format into .properties escaping. An alternative to using unicode escape characters for non-Latin-1 character in ISO 8859-1 character encoded Java *.properties files is to use the JDK's XML Properties file format which by default is UTF-8 encoded, introduced starting with Java 1.5. Another alternative is to create custom control that provides custom encoding. In Java 9 and newer, the default encoding specifically for property resource bundles is UTF-8, and if an invalid UTF-8 byte sequence is encountered it falls back to ISO-8859-1. Editing Editing .properties files is done using any text editor such as those typically installed on various Operating Systems including Notepad on Windows or Emacs, Vim, etc. on Linux systems. Third-party tools are also available with additional functionality specific to editing .properties files such as: Data Validation Creating new keys Synchronization of key names Automatic bi-directional conversion of non-ASCII symbols to support non-Latin languages Integration with Eclipse Non-Java uses and exceptions Apache Flex uses .properties files as well, but here they are UTF-8 encoded. In Apache mod_jk's uriworkermap.properties format, an exclamation mark ("!") denotes a Negation operator when used as the first non blank character in a line. Perl CPAN contains Config::Properties to interface to a .properties file. SAP uses .properties files for localization within their framework SAPUI5 and its open-source variant OpenUI5 There are many Node.js (JavaScript/TypeScript) options available on Npm's package manager. PHP also has many package options available. See also XML, JSON and YAML are used by some for more complex configuration formats. References External links - gives the precise semantics of well-formed Java property files - describes property resource bundles - explains Java properties in a simple XML format. MultiProperties - It is an Eclipse plugin for editing multiple key-value based files with similar content. This kind of file format can be Properties for example in Java programming language, which is frequently used for backing a ResourceBundle. Bracket Properties - a refresh of the Properties concept while keeping the ubiquitous .properties file format intact. Java Properties Editor (Application + Eclipse plugin) - useful utility to view and to edit properties files in a whole project. DOKSoft Properties Editor Eclipse plugin - i18n tool for installing into Eclipse IDE. Message Editor - it manages i18n for Java application. It generates XML property