In Visual Studio you need to set the extended window style to get a reading-order of right to left (WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL). Why is this required since if I'm using UNICODE and displaying Arabic characters the only possible way to display it is right-to-left? I'm surprised the system doesn't simply render it the correct way around. To note: this is on a Windows Mobile system where I've copied the Arial Unicode MS font onto it, which perhaps might explain why it can't cope.
Windows' support for RTL is more complex than just the text: WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL is actually about controling the layout of other elements in the window - from MSDN:
The window layout applies to text but also affects the other GDI elements of the window, including bitmaps, icons, the location of the origin, buttons, cascading tree controls, and whether the horizontal coordinate increases as you go left or right. For example, after an application has set RTL layout, the origin is positioned at the right edge of the window or device, and the number representing the horizontal coordinate increases as you move left.
So if you create a dialog that has this, the dialog will be "flipped" automatically (because the coordinates are reversed). If a scrollbar is present, it will be on the left side of the window, not the right. Treeviews will have the expand/collapse box and connecting lines on the right side, not the left - and so on.
In the case of a static, which doesn't contain other windows, the style may not appear to make much difference - but it likely will flip the justification: a static that is right-justified using SS_RIGHT would likely end up actually left-justified when WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL is used.
Also, as the other answer notes, not all text is spans of a single language. It's possible to have a single string that mixes scripts: you can have L-to-R spans within R-to-L, and vice versa, so having Windows "do the right thing" based on the text used would be very fragile.
Also consider the case of a treeview that displays the filenames running on an Arabic system: the treeview should keep a right-to-left layout (aligned against the right side) even if the user just happens to be browsing a directory or file system that happens to have english filenames.
Long story short: WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL is really about overall window layout, not specifically text direction itself. Even without this flag, you should still get Arabic/Hebrew rendered correctly as R-to-L if using the standard APIs/controls.
Presumably because it can't be determined what you're going to display at the window level - you could be displaying nothing, a language read left to right or a language read right to left. Thus you need to set it explicitly rather than having it attempt to deduce based off incomplete information.
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I've got this sfml window that displays a text and now I want to make it markable so that you can copy the text.
Any ideas how to do that?
If you just want to copy everything then just use
sf::Clipboard::setString(your_string_here);
If you want more features, here are some I implemented when I programmed a Code Editor in SFML.
I stored two indexes, the first is where the selection begins, and the second is where the section ends.
So in the string Hello World!, if you wanted to select World you would set the begin index to 6, and the end index to 10 or 11 (depending on whether you include the final character or not).
I render this using an sf::RectangleShape, since my editor supported multiple line selection boxes the code is more complicated, but for your example you would want to get the position of each character. I used my own text renderer, but SFML's sf::Text::findCharacterPos() should be able to help with that.
Next the copy part, this is just
sf::Clipboard::setString(getSelected());
where getSelected() is
return std::string::substr(selection_begin, selection_end - selection_begin);
If you want pasting as well then it is also simple:
eraseSelected();
insertStringAtCursor(sf::Clipboard::getString());
Which are both simple string operations as well (std::string::erase and reset the selection indexes, and std::string::insert).
Finally, to let the user change what is selected, either holding shift and pressing the arrow keys or clicking and dragging are both common ways, the former being easier than the latter.
For the former, check if shift is held and then if left or right is pressed update the indexes.
For the latter, you will need to handle mouse events and dragging. When dragging begins, set one of the indexes, whilst the mouse is moving and is dragging set the other index.
I wanted to wrap the existing text of checkbox into multiline if the width of row exceeds the width of its parent window. I am not really sure how to do that.
The image I want to show the checkbox string
The image where the string is cropped and only shows if window is resized or maximized
You are going to have a problem with this I am afraid.
The setting for making a checkbox multiline is ES_MULTILINE and if you look here you will see that it states:
To create an edit control using the CreateWindow or CreateWindowEx function, specify the EDIT class, appropriate window style constants, and a combination of the following edit control styles. After the control has been created, these styles cannot be modified, except as noted.
So, it would seem to me that you have three ways forward, depending on what you feel is the best or most elegant for you.
Set your control in the resource editor as multiline anyway. Then it doesn't matter and will wrap. No need to have to change the setting.
Implement the needed functionality to limit the size the window can be reduced to. I can show you how if you are interested. This way, if you set the control resize properties correctly it can resize larger but only reduce down the a known dimension (ie: the dimensions you created it in the resource editor).
Possibly have two controls in the same place, one as multiline and one as single. And when you decide which you want to show, swap the visibility. But I think this is a bad idea, bit of a headache, and not worth the hassle.
IMHO I would do both ideas 1 and 2 and I would happily extend my answer to provide more information.
Update
Having looked at your images and the comments about translations then there is a fourth idea. If you use a third party application to manage the translations and use satellite DLL files then you can adjust the resources on a language by language basis. I sometimes have to make the default width for some windows wider due to their verbose nature.
I have set BS_MULTILINE for the checkbox. The minimum size of the window is fixed but I just want the checkbox to fit in that. I expect it to show at least one word in the same line as other labels and remaining words in second line. So I am checking if the total width of the first row is greater than the width of window then show the string with \r\n in it else show normal string. However, I want to align first line or the first word of the checkbox with the checkbox and remaining words should come below the first word. Currently, the checkbox is in between two lines which looks weird. Is there anyway I can do this?
I have an MFC application. When running it on Windows 7 I realized that when changing the display percentage to meduium - 125%, I have a TextControl which is cut off (end of sentence doesn't appear.)
How can I fix this?
I could enlarge the size of the control on the dialog, but I'd rather do that via the code.
My application is localized and I woudn't want to change all the dialogs on every language.
In general, the issue is that absolute coordinates are being used for some sizing rather than relative. The framework will initially lay things out correctly in large DPI, it's then up to you to keep things straight through resizes.
You can use a layout framework like this one: Ultimate Toolbox Layout Manager, or you can roll your own.
Here's a common pattern I use:
Define a struct that captures ID, size, location, and layout behavior (anchor top|left|right|bottom) of a control
In the document constructor initialize an array of structs with your desired layout behavior
In OnInitDialog, capture the initial control positions, e.g. for controls set to anchor top left you need to grab the initial distance from the top and left of the parent.
In OnSize, reposition and resize each control according to its layout behavior.
I'm not exactly sure if it helps in your case but the ResizableLib works pretty well for me. You can also skip creating a library and just use the files in your project.
There is a separate article for CResizableDialog which explains in a few easy steps how to implement this for existing dialogs.
In the application there is a dialog where only numeric string entries are valid. Therefore I would like to set the numeric keyboard layout.
Does anyone know how to simulate key press on the keyboard or any other method to change the keyboard layout?
Thanks!
You don't need to.
Just like full windows, you can set the edit control to be numeric input only. You can either do it manually or in the dialog editor in the properites for the edit control.
The SIP should automatically display the numeric keyboard when the numeric only edit control goes into focus.
You can use the InputModeEditor:
InputModeEditor.SetInputMode(textBox1,InputMode.Numeric);
There is only one way to do this (edit: this is referring to the SIP in non-smartphone Windows Mobile, so I'm not sure it's relevant to your question), and it does involve simulating a mouse click on the 123 button. This is only half the problem, however, since you also need to know whether the keyboard is already in numeric mode or not. The way to do this is to peek a pixel near the upper left corner of the keypad - if you look at how the 123 button works, you'll see that it's system text on windows background, and then inverted in numeric mode (so the pixel will be the system text color only when in numeric mode). There's one more bit of weirdness you have to do to guarantee it will work on all devices (you have to draw a pixel on the keyboard, too).
Lucky for you, I have an easy-to-use code sample that does all this. Unlucky for you, it's in C#, but I think it should at least point you in the right direction.
I am building a custom win32 control/widget and would like to change the cursor to a horizontal "splitter" symbol when hovering over a particular vertical line in the control. IE: I want to drag this vertical line (splitter bar) left and right (WEST and EAST).
Of the the system cursors (OCR_*), the only cursor that makes sense is the OCR_SIZEWE. Unfortunately, that is the big, awkward cursor the system uses when resizing a window. Instead, I am looking for the cursor that is about 20 pixels tall and around 3 or 4 pixel wide with two small arrows pointing left and right.
I can easily draw this and include it as a resource in my application but the cursor itself is so prevalent that I wanted to be sure it wasn't missing something.
For example: when you use the COM drag and drop mechanism (CLSID_DragDropHelper, IDropTarget, etc) you implicitly have access to the "drag" icon (little box under the pointer). I didn't see an explicit OCR_* constant for this guy ... so likewise, if I can't find this splitter cursor outright, I am wondering if it is part of a COM object or something else in the win32 lib.
There are all sorts of icons, cursors, and images in use throughout the Windows UI which are not publicly available to 3rd-party software. Of course, you could still load up the module in which they reside and use them, but there's really no guarantee your program will keep working after a system update / upgrade.
Include your own. The last thing you want is adding an extra dependency over a tiny little cursor.
I had this exact problem. When I looked back over some old code for a vertical splitter thinking I had an easy answer, it turned out that I had build and loaded my own resource:
SetCursor( LoadCursor( ghInstance, "IDC_SPLITVERT" ));
I vaguely remember investing some considerable time and effort into find the system way of doing it, so (my guess) is that there is not a system ICON readily available to do the job, so you are better off rolling your own.
This is one of those times when I would like to be wrong, as I would have liked there to be a system icon for this job.