A number of world languages – for example, Hebrew and Arabic are based on the so-called right-to-left (RTL) writing systems, in which writing begins at the right-hand side of a page and concludes at the left-hand side, as opposed to the left-to-right direction used by most world's languages. To support localization into RTL languages, CloudBlue Commerce provides a capability to switch the language direction for a chosen locale from the default left-to-right order to RTL.
Switching to RTL changes not only the text direction in interface messages, it impacts the appearance of CloudBlue Commerce interface in general: the navigation frame is shown in the right side of the screen, all graphic and page layout elements are flipped horizontally, and the order of elements – for example, buttons, links or list columns – is inverted.
When the locale is switched to RTL direction, all numbers and CloudBlue Commerce entities' names consisting of Latin characters preserve their original text direction – left-to-right. Therefore, there is a scope of elements which are always shown in left-to-right order:
- URLs
- Domain names
- Email addresses
- File system paths
- Numbers: CloudBlue Commerce object IDs (the IDs of VPSs, domains, service templates, etc.), Screen IDs present on all CloudBlue Commerce screens, IP addresses, etc.
This whole situation leads to producing bi-directional text – a text in which the main stream of text is RTL, and the Latin names and numbers incorporated in the text appear left-to-right.
Note: In RTL locales, when inputting text into fields, all numbers and names entered in Latin keyboard layout are entered left-to-right, while information entered in the native layout of the RTL language is entered in RTL order.
For instructions on adding RTL language locales to CloudBlue Commerce, read the subsections below.