Oracle Forms Developer – Form Builder Reference, Volume 1

• SET_WINDOW_PROPERTY
• SET_VIEW_PROPERTY
• SET_ITEM_PROPERTY
General Usage Notes:
• If you want all items on your form to default to the natural writing direction specified by the
language environment variable, set Language Direction at the Form level to Default, and allow all
other Direction properties to be Default, as well.
• In most cases, the Default setting will provide the functionality you need. Occasionally, however,
you may want to override the default by setting the Direction property for a specific object that
needs to be displayed differently from the higher-level Direction property. For example, you may
want to have most items on a canvas inherit their Direction from the canvas Direction property, but
in the case of a specific text item, you might set the Direction property to override the default.
• If you are developing a bilingual application and need to display both Local and Roman menus,
create a trigger to display the correct version of the menu based on the USER_NLS_LANG property
of the GET_APPLICATION_PROPERTY built-in.
• Follow these guidelines when choosing a Direction property value:
• If you are developing a bilingual application and want to display a Local object in Right-To-Left
mode and a Roman object in Left-To-Right, use the Default value.
• If the object is normally composed of Local text, choose the Right-To-Left value.
• If the object is normally composed of Roman text, choose the Left-To-Right value.
Direction (Alert)
Specifies the layout direction of the alert interface items, including the reading order of the text displayed
within the alert window.
Direction (Button)
Specifies the reading order of button text and the initial keyboard state when the button receives input
focus.
Direction (Canvas)
Specifies the layout direction of the canvas, including:
• layout direction used in the Layout Editor
• point of origin (for Right-to-Left, point of origin is top right corner; for Left-to-Right, point of origin
is top left corner)
• display of rulers and scrollbars
• reading order of boilerplate text
Canvas Usage Notes:
• Refer to the Usage Notes for the form-level Direction property to determine which value to choose.
• To develop an application with blocks laid out in different directions, place each block on a
different canvas. This will provide:
• automatic layout of blocks in the canvas Direction property
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