Bidirectional language text

Bidirectional (bidi) languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are languages in which the text is presented to the user ordered from right to left, but numbers and Latin alphabetic strings within the text are presented left to right. In addition, the order in which characters appear within program variables can vary. The text is usually stored in logical order, the order in which the characters are entered in the input field.

These differences in ordering and in other associated presentation characteristics require the program to have the ability to convert bi-directional text strings from one format to another. The bidi conversion attributes are specified in a bidi conversion table (.bct) file created separately from the program. The program references the name of the conversion table to indicate how attribute conversion should be performed.

In all cases, the bidi conversion table reference is specified as the 1 to 8 character file name without the .bct extension. For example, if you have created a bidi conversion table named mybct.bct, you can set the value of formConversionTable in a program by adding the following statement at the beginning of the program:

  sysVar.formConversionTable = "mybct.bct" ;

Your tasks are as follows:

• Create bidi conversion tables that specify the transformations that should occur. Note that different tables are needed for converting data to be displayed in a text or print form .

• When generating a program that uses text or print forms with bidi language text, add a statement to the program that assigns the conversion table name to the system function sysVar.formConversionTable before showing the form.

You build the bidi conversion table file using the bidi conversion table wizard plugin, which is in the file BidiConversionTable.zip:

1. Download the file from the following web site:

2. Unzip the file into your workbench directory

3. To begin running the wizard, click File > New > Other > BidiConversionTable.

   The name of a table used with EGL programs must have eight characters or less and must have the .bct extension.

4. While running the wizard, press F1 for help in choosing the correct options for creating the table.

Related reference


Data conversion

sysVar.callConversionTable