The Moth

In some places in the world they read and write from right to left (RTL). Prime examples of such languages are hebrew and arabic. As a software developer, if your market extends to such users, you should support RTL in your application. Unlike support for a LTR language, there are additional things your windows app must do. For .NET apps this includes using the Control.RightToLeft property.

For the Compact Framework the story is less straightforward. You see, the CF is a subset of the .NET Framework that runs on Windows CE based devices. Windows CE 4.x and previous versions do not support RTL (since all current Pocket PC devices are based on the CE 3.x/4.2 operating system, by definition they do not support RTL either). There may be 3rd party solutions available, but I am not aware of any. It would be a nice touch if the CF implemented RTL support without support from the OS (i.e. it could simulate it) however that would probably mean that the windows controls would not be just thin wrappers of the OS equivalent and hence performance would suffer - not to mention framework size.

The OS story becomes much better with the next version of Windows CE. In a sentence, CE 5.0 supports RTL :-)

For devs with their own platform this means migrating from 4.2 to 5.0. (for devs of PPCs [Windows Mobile for Pocket PC] or SPs [Windows Mobile for SmartPhone], my *guess* is you have to wait for a next version of Windows Mobile which if based on CE 5.0 could expose the underlying OS support).

Since CE 5.0 supports RTL and since Compact Framework 2.0 *only* runs on CE 5.0 (and WM2003 for PPC), I'd forgive you for making the logical jump that CF 2.0 exposes Control.RightToLeft - think again. That's right, the infamous "postponed"!

Before we go off in a sulk, it is worth capturing what we mean by RTL support:

1. CheckBoxes (the square bit) and RadioButtons (the circle bit) should appear on the left [there is no CheckAlign property on CF]
2. UpDown buttons (e.g. NumericUpDown and DomainUpDown) should appear on left
3. Controls with vertical scrollbar (e.g. TreeView, ListView, ListBox, multiline TextBox etc) should render the scrollbar on the left
4. Wherever there is text that is naturally left-aligned, it should be right-aligned (e.g. *any* control with .Text property such as Form or .Items such as ListView)
5. Menus, ToolBar buttons and form buttons (i.e. max/min/close buttons, control box) must be mirrored (right aligned)
6. ProgressBar, TrackBar and HScrollBar should start from right.
and a more subtle one
7. Shadows of controls should appear on the left. If you haven't noticed this before, have a closer look at button/scrollbar/trackbar etc: they have a white border top & left and dark border bottom & right. The left & right shades must be switched when RTL applies.

Next time we'll see what we can do with CF 2.0 to support RTL on CE 5.0. I'll include screenshots and details of which controls (based on the November CTP) pose insurmountable problems!