Right-To-Left layout (RTL) support in wxWidgets

Posted on October 14, 2006 by Robert

Here is some information about the support for locales with right-to-left (RTL) layout out in wxWidgets. As you probably know, RTL-support is required mostly of Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi. It has been decided that wxWidgets should follow mostly the Windows API and Windows approach for displaying RTL text and layout in applications. This approach is described in a document at MSDN. In short, all coordinates for drawing and for window positioning are mirrored horizontally which means that (apart from bitmap mirroring) little has to be done at the user level. Also, the various native Win32 controls are modified to support RTL design.

This is different from what is done under GTK+, where no coordinates are mirrored. Instead, every app needs to mirror everything itself, even if the job of mirroring controls is mostly done within GTK+’s layout container automatically. As far as drawing within wxWidgets is concerned, coordinates are mirrored at the wxDC level in the GTK+ port.

I have added two screenshots from the popular FileZilla application running in the ar_EG (Egyptian variant of Arab) locale (screenshots in parts thanks to Tim Kosse). Since the tree control in the Linux screenshot is using generic wxWidgets code, this also demonstrates how drawing and scrolling is mirrored for user windows.

Below is a screenshot using wxWidgets and GTK 2.4.9.

Here is roughly the same screenshot using Windows 2000.