The manual is kindof sparse on this topic. It talks about color.properties as if it means something, but in reality, it is completely ignored. Could you explain why? I mean, I just had this happen when I only had a en_US properties file and someone in it_IT tried to run and it blew up. Tried to just create a base.properties file and it still blows up in that it can't find my locale. I like using cal10n, but don't want 700 different properties files just so they can run my software. Perhaps adding a required default locale in @BaseName? public @interface BaseName { String value(); Locale defaultLocale(); } That would at least specify a default to use without breaking the no default resource bundle problem. At the end of MessageConveyor.lookup(), if a resource bundle for the current locale could not be found, it could extract the default Locale from the BaseName annotation. Then just execute the same basic code (getting any specified charset for the default locale) and calling CAL10NResourceBundleFinder.getBundle() with the default locale instead of the current locale. It doesn't break anything and we can now use software anywhere. Or, is there some other way of doing what I want? Thanks, Michael