{"id":100295,"date":"2018-11-22T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=100295"},"modified":"2018-11-22T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-22T15:00:00","slug":"how-can-i-make-a-dialog-box-right-to-left-at-runtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20181122-00\/?p=100295","title":{"rendered":"How can I make a dialog box right-to-left at runtime?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nA customer had a program that decided at runtime\nwhat language to use for its user interface.\nThe customer was having trouble getting the program’s\ndialog boxes to show up with right-to-left layout\nwhen necessary.\n<\/P>\n

\n

\nWe are setting the\nWS_<\/CODE>EX_<\/CODE>LAYOUT­RTL<\/CODE>\nextended style in the dialog box’s\nWM_<\/CODE>INIT­DIALOG<\/CODE> message handler,\nbut\nwhat we’re seeing is\nthat although the style applies successfully,\nand the dialog itself renders RTL,\nits child elements don’t.\n<\/P>\n

\n\n\n \n
\n
\n ×<\/B><\/SPAN>\n emaN a esoohC<\/SPAN>\n <\/DIV>\n <\/TD>\n<\/TR>\n
\n
Name:<\/DIV>\n
John Smith<\/DIV>\n
\n \n OK<\/SPAN>\n <\/SPAN>\n <\/TD>\n<\/TR>\n<\/TABLE>\n<\/DIV>\n<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n

\nThe actual screen shot provided by the customer\ninvolved Arabic text, but I used English text so you\ncan see which parts are running left-to-right and\nwhich parts are right-to-left.\nAlso, because I don’t know Arabic.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe title bar is running right-to-left, as desired,\nbut the contents of the dialog are still left-to-right.\nWhat’s going on?\n<\/P>\n

\nAs I’ve noted before,\n\nthe\nWS_<\/CODE>EX_<\/CODE>LAYOUT­RTL<\/CODE>\nextended style\nis inherited by child windows<\/A>\n(unless blocked by the\nWS_<\/CODE>EX_<\/CODE>NO­INHERIT­LAYOUT<\/CODE>\nextended style).\nWhat I didn’t call out is that this inheritance occurs at the\npoint the child window is created.\nThe child window takes a snapshot of its parent window’s\nlayout;\nfuture changes to the parent window’s layout have no effect.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe next piece of the puzzle is realizing that the\nWM_<\/CODE>INIT­DIALOG<\/CODE> message\nis sent after the child windows have been created.\n\nI called this out explicitly in an earlier discussion of dialog boxes<\/A>,\nbut you already know this,\nbecause your\nWM_<\/CODE>INIT­DIALOG<\/CODE> message handler\ncalls\nGet­Dlg­Item<\/CODE> to obtain handles to dialog\nchild windows in order to initialize and configure them.\n<\/P>\n

\nSo you need to get the\nWS_<\/CODE>EX_<\/CODE>LAYOUT­RTL<\/CODE>\nonto the window before child windows are created.\nOne way of doing this is to edit the dialog template\nand add (or remove) the\nWS_<\/CODE>EX_<\/CODE>LAYOUT­RTL<\/CODE>\nextended style\nfrom the\n\ndwExStyle<\/CODE> member of the 32-bit extended header<\/A>\nbefore you call\nCreate­Dialog­Indirect<\/CODE> or one of its relatives.\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ll have to get that style change in quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-100295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

You’ll have to get that style change in quickly.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}