Re: [XNap-Commons-Devel] GUI Components to Support ComponentOrientation?

[Sean C. <sc...@gm...>]

On 10/27/05, Felix Berger <bf...@gm...> wrote:
> On Thursday 27 October 2005 20:16, Sean Crotty wrote:
>
> > >From what I see, most of the xnap components don't support
> >
> > java.awt.ComponentOrientation other than LEFT_TO_RIGHT.
> >
> > 1) Am I right about this?
>
> I think you're right about this.
>
> > 2) If so, is there any plan to enable this?
>
> Could you be a bit more specific as to what components you would expect t=
o
> have support for component orientation and in what way? Does this only af=
fect
> text components?

I think all the xnap commons GUI components need work in this regard.

For example, FileChooserPanel inherits from java.awt.Component and
thus offers an API to setComponentOrientation(
java.awt.ComponentOrientation o ). Unfortunately, from what I can
tell, using this API this does not rearrange the parts (text box, edit
box, folder icon) of the FileChooserPanel based on the
ComponentOrientation passed in. If I do:

FileChooserPanel chooser =3D new FileChooserPanel(20);
chooser.setComponentOrientation(ComponentOrientation.RIGHT_TO_LEFT);

The shown FileChooserPanel does not seem to rearrange for
right-to-left languages like Arabic or Hebrew.

Other xnap commons GUI components like the various
org.xnap.commons.gui.Dialogs hide access to the underlying
java.awt.Component and so even setting the ComponentOrientation is
impossible for them.

The reason I ask is that I'm evaluating frameworks that will help
facilitate development on a new project. However, this project must be
fully I18N, G11N, L10N compliant. This includes supporting physical
layout changes of GUI components for languages written right-to-left
or even vertically.

Many of the tools in xnap commons are attractive for my needs. If I
can negotiate the time, I might even be able to devote some time to
providing such support in the xnap commons source. It will really come
down to whether the benefit of using the xnap commons components in
their current state more than offset the time required to get them
fully I18N-able.

I apologize if I way off base here. I've been working through
O'Reilly's "Java Internationalization" (ISBN 0-596-00019-7) for
information on how to make my application compliant. There is a
chapter in there specifically regarding I18N GUIs.

Thanks,
Sean