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RightToLeft Property

The base Control class (from which Forms derive) includes a RightToLeft property that you can set to change the reading order of a Form and its controls. If you set the Form's RightToLeft property, by default, controls on the Form inherit this setting. However, you can also set the RightToLeft property individually on most controls.

The effect of the RightToLeft property can differ from one control to another. In some controls it only sets the reading order, as in the Button, TreeView and ToolTip controls. In other controls, the RightToLeft property changes both reading order and layout. This includes the RadioButton, ComboBox and CheckBox controls. The following table provides details on how the RightToLeft property affects individual Windows Forms controls.

Control/Component	Effect of RightToLeft property	Requires mirroring?
`Button`	Sets the RTL reading order	No
`CheckBox`	The check box is displayed on the right side of the text	No
`CheckedListBox`	All the check boxes are displayed on the right side of the text	No
`ColorDialog`	Not affected; depends on the language of the operating system	No
`ComboBox`	Items in combo box control are right-aligned	No
`ContextMenu`	Appears right-aligned with RTL reading order	No
`DataGrid`	Appears right-aligned with RTL reading order	No
`DateTimePicker`	Not affected; depends on the language of the operating system	No
`DomainUpDown`	Left-aligns the up and down buttons	No
`ErrorProvider`	Not supported	No
`FontDialog`	Depends on the language of the operating system	No
`GroupBox`	The caption is displayed right aligned. Child controls may inherit this property.	No
`HScrollBar`	Starts with the scroll box (thumb) right-aligned	No
`ImageList`	Not required	No
`Label`	Displayed right-aligned	No
`LinkLabel`	Displayed right-aligned	No
`ListBox`	Items are right-aligned	No
`ListView`	Sets the reading order to RTL; elements stay left-aligned	Yes
`MainMenu`	Displayed right-aligned with RTL reading order at run time (not at design time)	No
`MonthCalendar`	Not affected; depends on the language of the operating system	No
`NotifyIcon`	Not supported	No
`NumericUpDown`	Up and down buttons are left-aligned	No
`OpenFileDialog`	Not affected; depends on the language of the operating system	No
`PageSetupDialog`	Not affected; depends on the language of the operating system	No
`Panel`	Child controls may inherit this property	Yes
`PictureBox`	Not supported	No
`PrintDialog`	Not affected; depends on the language of the operating system	No
`PrintDocument`	The vertical scroll bar become left-aligned and the horizontal scroll bar starts from the left	No
`PrintPreview`	Not affected by this property	No
`PrintPreviewDialog`	Text displayed in a `Form`'s title bar is right-aligned	No
`ProgressBar`	Not affected by this property	Yes
`RadioButton`	The radio button is displayed on the right side of the text	No
`RichTextBox`	Control elements that include text are displayed from right to left with RTL reading order	No
`SaveFileDialog`	Not affected; depends on the language of the operating system	No
`Splitter`	Not supported	No
`StatusBar`	The text in the panels is right-aligned with RTL reading order	Yes
`TabControl`	Not affected by this property	Yes
`TextBox`	Displays text from right to left with RTL reading order	No
`Timer`	Not required	No
`ToolBar`	Not affected by this property	Yes
`ToolTip`	Sets the RTL reading order	No
`TrackBar`	The scroll or track starts from the right	No
`TreeView`	Sets the RTL reading order only	Yes
`VScrollBar`	Displayed on the left side rather than right side of scrollable controls	No

Mirroring

Mirroring refers to reversing the layout of UI elements so that they flow from right to left. In a mirrored Windows Form, for example, the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons appear left-most on the title bar, not right-most.

Setting a form or control's RightToLeft property to true reverses the reading order of elements on a form, but it does not reverse the layout to be right-to-left — that is, it does not cause mirroring. For example, it does not move the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons in the form's title bar to the left side of the form. Similarly, some controls, such as the TreeView control, require mirroring in order to change their display to be appropriate for Arabic or Hebrew.

You cannot directly mirror a form or control. However, you can create mirroring in code. For forms, you can set an extended Windows style to cause mirroring. For most controls that require mirroring, you can create a mirrored control by inheriting from the base control and setting the same Windows extended style. You can create mirrored versions of the following controls:

`ListView`	`Panel`	`StatusBar`
`TabControl`	`TabPage`	`ToolBar`
`Treeview`

Some controls are sealed, so you cannot derive a new control from them. These include the ImageList and ProgressBar controls.

But there is a non-like thing. When you design a Form and put some some controls on it, the appearance during runtime will be mirrored. The control that you put it at the right of the form will be shown at the left.

History

14 Nov 2003 - udpated downloads

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here

About the Author

A.Said

BS(Electronics Engineer)

Location:

Turkey

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Msgs 1 to 14 of 14 (Total in Forum: 14) (Refresh)

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Subject

Author

Date

Ebrahim Nasr

ebrahimbaba

4:11 30 Mar '07

RTL not work for pocketpc i want use it in pocket please modify this file
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Toolbar RTL

nighelfs

5:55 18 Sep '06

I can't mirror the toolbar correctly.. the text of the toolbar will get mirrored when I use protected override CreateParams CreateParams { get { CreateParams CP; CP = base.CreateParams; if ( m_mirrored ) { CP.ExStyle = CP.ExStyle \| WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL; } return CP; } } If I include WS_EX_NOINHERITLAYOUT, the toolbar won't get mirrored at all. Please help.
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righttoleft in listbox doesnt work!!!! [modified]

nafiseh_salmani

21:14 13 Aug '06

i want to set righttoleft by codding in fire. but it doesnt work. what should i do? `private void listbox1_DrawItem(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.DrawItemEventArgs e) { this.li_author_persian.RightToLeft=RightToLeft.Yes; }` -- modified at 2:29 Monday 14th August, 2006
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Help for RTL Tab Pages

salianrakesh

21:41 24 Feb '06

Hi Everyone I tried the code placed in this article and it works fine with me. Only issue currently i have is that tab controls pages doesnt have any effect when i am assiging tabControl1.Mirrored = true; pls can anyone tell me how to solve this issue? I am writting code in C# Thanks Rakesh
Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink	2.00/5 (1 vote)

garbage during mouseover in right to left layout

audille

23:18 8 Apr '05

Hi everyone... Does anyone know why some garbage appears whenever I hover over a link in a right to left layout (for Hebrew/Arabic OSes)? I have already added window styles WS_EX_NOINHERITLAYOUT and WS_EX_LAYOUT_RTL to my resource files. Do I need to do some code fixing? The controls are owner-drawn... I would gladly appreciate any help. Thanks very much!
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Re: garbage during mouseover in right to left layout

Averk

1:04 11 Dec '05

It may be a result of incorrect DC mirroring in RTL mode. You may just simply mess left and right when calculating coordinates of drawing operations See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/winui/winui/windowsuserinterface/windowing/windows/windowfeatures.asp -> Window Layout and Mirroring
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Mirror Progressbar in RTL

deepapai

18:37 28 Mar '05

Need help in flipping the progress bar in Windows form(.Net) without flipping the text in the progress bar. Also the movement of the progressbar needs to be flipped. This i need to support RTL
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Main Menu

Peer Adi

22:46 15 Nov '04

Hi:

I have a problem using a main menu with the Right To Left property. When using a Main Menu with the Right To Left property in an MDI window - what happens is that each child window that added to the Main MDI window that has a Main Menu - add it's menu to the right of the MDI Main Menu. After opening one of the menus and closing it - the Order Of the manus changes to be Right To Left again. This all happens in Run Time.

Do you know about it ?
Can You Help ?

Thanks ...

Peer Adi
adip@tici.co.il

OMG

5.00/5 (1 vote)

Re: Main Menu

mshoukry_alkhwarazmi

23:43 29 Oct '05

Hello, You can add this line of code to the load event of your form : this.OnRightToLeftChanged(EventArgs.Empty); Mohamed Shoukry
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Tree View

Fakher Halim

14:56 10 Aug '04

Mirroring of Tree View works perfecty! Fakher Halim
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RTL is not perfect ...

morali2k

2:44 22 May '04

hey buddies , um using many user controls of my own and they are complicated and hierchically built as controls inside controls inside controls ..., most of them are loaded dynamically in the run time and the right to left methods posted in the articles seem useless to this situation ... anybody can help !!!! Ahmed Amin El-Morali S/W Developer EGYPT
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ListView RTL

fabis

1:57 10 Mar '04

Important fixed to ListView Mirrored.
1) Notice that a mirrored Listview unsets its RTL reading order thus we have to re-write our CreateParams like this:

   'Retrieve the CreateParams class to change the style
   Dim CP As System.Windows.Forms.CreateParams = MyBase.CreateParams
   'If the control needs RTL add these styles
   If Me._RTL Then
         'Fixes ListView RTL bugs:
         CP.ExStyle = CP.ExStyle Or Win32.WindowExStyles.WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL _
         Xor Win32.WindowExStyles.WS_EX_RTLREADING _
         Or Win32.WindowExStyles.WS_EX_LEFT
   End If

   Note: Check this behavor by writting hebrew or arabic text convined with numbers or english.

2) All ListView's columns but the first turns Right aligned, therefore in some Load event you have to set them Left by code. Note: That's a Listview's bug since the days of Windows NT.

Have a nice RTL programming.

Fabian Szenkier
Software Engineer

1.50/5 (2 votes)

Re: ListView RTL

Anonymous

6:51 20 Mar '04

Have anyone succeeded to have a RTL Tooltip on a mirrored Listview? (I haven't).
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Missing Files!

tim_mcgwyn

7:27 27 Sep '03

You show File-Links - but there aren't some files to get
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