[icu-support] formatting a java.text.Calendar's date with ICU4J

[Matthew H. <mh...@us...>]

Hello,

  I use ICU4J to format dates.  I've found some strange behavior when 
formatting a Date from a Calendar, when the Calendar is a 
java.util.Calendar not a com.ibm.icu.util.Calendar.  For example, the code 
below formats a java.util.Calendar set to January 1, 1900.  When the 
default time zone happens to be "Europe/Helsinki" it prints out "December 
31, 1899 11:39:52 PM GMT+01:39:52".  I expect it to print "January 1, 1900 
12:00:00 AM GMT+02:00".

        java.util.Calendar c = java.util.Calendar.getInstance();
        c.set( 1900, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 );
        c.set( java.util.Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0 );
        System.out.println( "java.util.Calendar's time is " + c.getTime() 
);

        com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormat df = 
com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance( 
com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormat.LONG, com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormat.LONG );
        System.out.println( "the formatted time is " + df.format( 
c.getTime() ) );

  The problem disappears if I add TimeZone.setDefaultTimeZoneType( 
TimeZone.TIMEZONE_JDK ); at the beginning of my program.  Is that the 
correct solution?  Is there another solution that doesn't have such a 
global impact?

  Thanks for your time,
  Matt