In the context of the problems associated with ASCII/EBCDIC conversion, JAR archives can create special difficulties because they also constitute an exchange format between different environments (systems). You can pack applets including all their resources into JAR archives and load them over the network by a browser. Java offers corresponding methods for accessing the resources packed in this way (see java.util.ResourceBundle).
The typical resources here often also include property files (e.g. with error messages). To ensure interchangeability, property files which are stored in JAR archives must therefore always be in ISO8859-1 encoding i.e. they must previously be converted into this code set by the creator of such a JAR archive in BS2000.
If the user introduces a manifest file of his/her own into the JAR archive (option -m):
The manifest file is generated by the jar command itself, this occurs automatically using ISO8859-1 encoding.
If the user creates the manifest file himself, it must first be converted into the ISO8859-1 code set.
The methods for accessing these resources in JAR archives are designed so that they also expect ASCII input in BS2000.
To support the code conversion of files, the command native2ascii is provided.