February 3rd, 2016

Localization gotcha: The RTL question mark

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Displaying a question mark in RTL is not as easy as it sounds, because different languages use different question marks.

Languages which use Arabic or Arabic-style script flip the question mark, resulting in ؟. On the other hand, Hebrew does not flip the question mark; they use the LTR-style ?.

This is normally handled as part of string localization, but you have to be careful if you have a question mark embedded into a bitmap, such as a Help icon or button. You have to make the bitmap available to localization so that the Arabic localizers can flip the question mark, whereas the Hebrew localizers leave it alone.

Category
Old New Thing
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Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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