{"id":13743,"date":"2010-06-11T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2010\/06\/11\/how-do-i-indicate-that-i-want-my-window-to-follow-right-to-left-layout-rules\/"},"modified":"2010-06-11T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T07:00:00","slug":"how-do-i-indicate-that-i-want-my-window-to-follow-right-to-left-layout-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20100611-00\/?p=13743","title":{"rendered":"How do I indicate that I want my window to follow right-to-left layout rules?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many ways, depending on how wide a scope you want.\n If there is one specific window that you want to follow right-to-left layout rules, then you pass the WS_EX_LAYOUT­RTL<\/code> extended window style when you create the window. This extended style is inherited by child windows, so once you set a top-level window to have right-to-left layout, all child windows will have it, too. To block the WS_EX_LAYOUT­RTL<\/code> extended style from being inherited by child windows, pass the WS_EX_NO­INHERIT­LAYOUT<\/code> style when you create the parent window.\n Sidebar<\/b>: If you’re calling the Message­Box<\/code> function, then you don’t directly control the styles of the top-level window. But there’s a weird back-channel way to specify that you want the message box dialog to have the WS_EX_LAYOUT­RTL<\/code> extended style: Begin the lpText<\/code> string with two U+200F characters<\/a>. Then again, instead of Message­Box<\/code> you should be using the Task­Dialog­Indirect<\/code> function which not only lets you customize the text on the buttons, but also lets you pass the TDF_RTL_LAYOUT<\/code> flag to indicate that you want the dialog to be laid out according to RTL rules. (And as an aid to porting, the Task­Dialog<\/code> and Task­Dialog­Indirect<\/code> functions implicitly turn on the TDF_RTL_LAYOUT<\/code> flag if they find that pszContent<\/code> is a pointer to a string—not a MAKE­INT­RESOURCE<\/code>—which begins with two U+200F characters.) End sidebar<\/b>.¹\n If you want right-to-left layout rules to apply to all top-level windows in your process, you have two choices. You can either do it programmatically or declaratively. (Similar to how you can specify DPI-awareness either programmatically or declaratively<\/a>.)\n The programmatic way is to call Set­Process­Default­Layout(LAYOUT_RTL)<\/code><\/a> from your application. The declarative way is to insert two left-to-right marks (U+200E) at the beginning of the File­Description<\/i> version resource string of the executable<\/a>.\n Note that the caveats which apply to changing the process DPI awareness programmatically also apply to changing the default process layout programmatically: Code which calls Get­Process­Default­Layout<\/code> will see the default at the time of the call, even if some code later on calls Set­Process­Default­Layout<\/code> to change it.\n Note also that it really is the application’s call whether its default layout is left-to-right or right-to-left. A DLL shouldn’t decide on its own to change the process default layout, at least not without coöperation from that process. If you are a DLL and you want to create a specific window with right-to-left layout, you should use the WS_EX_LAYOUT­RTL<\/code> method so that your decision applies only to your DLL’s windows. (Otherwise you’re using a global setting to manage a local problem<\/a>.)\n Bonus chatter<\/b>: Why isn’t the default layout specified in the manifest like DPI-awareness? Because RTL support was added in Windows 2000, which predated application manifests by several years. If the feature were invented today, the manifest would be a much better place for declaring it.\n Update<\/b>\n ¹ Commenter SCB pointed out that there is indeed a flag to specify that you want RTL layout on your message box: MB_RTLREADING<\/code>. If that flag exists, then why also have the U+200F back-channel?<\/p>\n

Answer: So that translators can mark a string as requiring RTL treatment without having to go back and make code changes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many ways, depending on how wide a scope you want. If there is one specific window that you want to follow right-to-left layout rules, then you pass the WS_EX_LAYOUT­RTL extended window style when you create the window. This extended style is inherited by child windows, so once you set a top-level window to […]<\/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-13743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

There are many ways, depending on how wide a scope you want. If there is one specific window that you want to follow right-to-left layout rules, then you pass the WS_EX_LAYOUT­RTL extended window style when you create the window. This extended style is inherited by child windows, so once you set a top-level window to […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13743","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=13743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13743\/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=13743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}