Creating a Right-To-Left Page

[Alex Maghen]

I'm confused about what settigns I have to make to create a plage that will
be primarily a right-to-left language page. This would mean that text would
be aligned right by default, table cells would be too. And controls like a
Checkbox would, by default, have their text to the RIGHT of the box as
opposed to the left. Is there one setting that will accomplish all of this? I
can't imagine I have to mess with each object that way.

I tried the <bodytag's "lang" but that doesn't seem to really change
anything.

Alex

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hello Alex,

As for right-to-left/RTL text, they're mostly used in some middle-east
languages and dealing with these text in globalization development is
normally calld "BIDI" text processing.

Based on my experience, for web application, BIDI text displaying is mainly
supported through some HTML/XHTML standards setting, such as the "dir"
attributes. e.g.

<span dir="rtl" ................</span>

You can find most information about BIDI text processing in the following
I18N portal site:

#Bidirectional text
http://www.w3.org/International/resource-index#bidi
In Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, you can create ASP.NET applications by
using either Microsoft Visual Basic .NET or Microsoft Visual C# .NET. The
guidelines that you should follow are basically the same as those you have
just seen for mirroring Web content. When you design Arabic Web Forms
pages, the best way to make text flow from right to left is to use the DIR
attribute. As with Web content, this attribute is usually placed in the
<HTMLtag or the <BODYtag. Controls and HTML elements on the page then
inherit the specified direction.

You can set the DIR attribute at a DOCUMENT object level. All the controls
on the form will inherit the same settings. However, the DIR attribute can
be used individually with other tags such as <TABLEand in Web Forms
controls, as in the following example, which allows items to be displayed
from right to left. e.g.

<TABLE dir="rtl" ...>

<asp:TextBox dir="rtl" ...>

In addition, here are some other resource about developing BIDI text awared
application(desktop and web):
**some slides from some MS localization engineers:

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...4-96b2-4559295
43124/Developing%20Arabic%20Applications%20in%20VS%20200 5.ppt
**public reference on developing middleeast specific software:

http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/msdn
http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/...icsupp.aspx#22
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/g...ror.mspx#EWIAC

** A good globaldev book:
"Developing International Software / Dr. International-- 2nd ed" (there is
a chapter there about bidi in asp.net)

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead

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