| <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><HTML> |
| <head> |
| |
| <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2006. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page." > |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us"> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> |
| <link REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../../book.css" CHARSET="ISO-8859-1" TYPE="text/css"> |
| <title>Supporting bidirectional text</title> |
| </head> |
| <BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"> |
| <h1>Supporting bidirectional text</h1> |
| <p>A bidirectional language is one that can write either right to left or left to |
| right based on context. Bidirectional text is supported throughout the platform. |
| Eclipse will recognize Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu as bidirectional by default.</p> |
| <h2>Enabling Bidirectional Support</h2> |
| <p>The orientation of the workbench is determined in one of the following ways |
| (in order of priority):</p> |
| <ul> |
| <li><strong>-dir command line parameter</strong>. If the -dir command line option |
| is used this will be the default orientation. Valid values are -dir rtl or -dir ltr.</li> |
| <li><strong>system properties</strong>. If the system property <tt>eclipse.orientation</tt> |
| is set this will be used. The recognized values of this property are the same as |
| the -dir command line argument.</li> |
| <li><strong>-nl command line parameter</strong>. If the -nl option is used and |
| the language is Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi or Urdu the orientation will be right |
| to left.</li> |
| <li>Failing all of the above, the platform defaults to a left to right orientation.</li> |
| </ul> |
| <p> |
| In JFace, the orientation can be determined by calling |
| <b>org.eclipse.jface.Window#getDefaultOrientation()</b>. Standalone JFace |
| applications must set the default orientation by calling |
| <b>org.eclipse.jface.Window#setDefaultOrientation()</b>, otherwise it |
| will assume a default value of <b>SWT.NONE</b>. The default orientation is |
| set automatically when running the Workbench. All subclasses of <tt>org.eclipse.jface.Window</tt> |
| inherit this default orientation.</p> |
| <p>Views and editors inherit the window orientation from their |
| parent. Dialogs should inherit orientation by using the shell style of their |
| superclass by calling <b>super.getShellStyle()</b> when creating or configuring their shell.</p> |
| <p><img src="bidi.png" alt="bidi image"></p> |
| <p><strong>Figure 1 - Screen shot of right to left orientation of the resource |
| perspective</strong></p> |
| <h2>Enabling your plug-in for looking up alternate icons</h2> |
| <p>In many cases your icons will not make any sense in right to left mode. In |
| particular any icon to do with editing will have this issue.To enable lookup |
| of images in a fragment, use $nl$ in your icon path and use |
| the <b>org.eclipse.core.runtime.FileLocator</b> class to find icons at runtime. |
| </p> |
| <p>For example</p> |
| <pre> |
| String iconPath = "$nl$/icons/myicon.gif"; |
| URL url = FileLocator.find( Platform.getBundle(MyPluginId), new Path(iconPath), null); |
| Image Descriptor descriptor = ImageDescriptor.createFromURL(url); |
| </pre> |
| <p> |
| If the icon reference is in your <tt>plugin.xml</tt> file, make sure you have the $nl$ |
| prefix on your path and the lookup will be handled for you. If you define your |
| own extension points that involve icons, be sure to load images in the same way. |
| </p> |
| <h2>How to choose icons to override</h2> |
| <p>There are no hard and fast rules for determining what icons need to be overridden |
| in a right to left language. In general, focus on icons that imply a textual direction with a |
| horizontal arrow.</p> |
| |
| </BODY></HTML> |
