New to Java

Why is it such a pain to use java in a country that uses commas as decimal separator?

A few weeks back I've asked here about the keypad decimal key. For some reason, java doesn't map the decimal key to a comma on the Portuguese (Portugal) keyboard layout. I've got no answer and I ended up using a custom plainDocument on the JTextFields to replace all points with commas.

Now, I've just spent the whole morning trying to store and use decimal numbers properly. For some reason, a Double/Float .valueOf method (or the corresponding parse method) simply ignores the locale in use and uses US defaults when parsing the string. I can't parse anything with commas in those methods and I should, as it is the decimal separator for the system and default locale being used by java.

First of all, I shouldn't be expected to perform replacements on every single operation that comes with a comma and I obviously can't be expected to program my own locale checking to decide what decimal separator to use in each final system. Second, is there any way to work with numbers seamlessly, without having to know the locale of the end user?

I'm sorry if this is all my fault for doing something completly wrong, I'm new to java and I did search around to no avail. I'm really frustrated with what seems to be a complete lack of support in java for locales other than the US one.