The Form.RightToLeftLayout property is primarily useful for developing world-ready forms for worldwide audiences. Many forms are designed so that controls are laid out on a form in a left-to-right fashion. These forms are compatible with languages that follow this writing direction. However, when you display the same forms to users of right-to-left languages, it is often preferable to reverse the order of the controls on the form. If both the Form.RightToLeftLayout and Control.RightToLeft properties are true, mirroring will be turned on for the form, and control placement and text flow will be right-to-left.

Unlike Control.RightToLeft, Form.RightToLeftLayout does not inherit. If you want it to take effect for child controls, you must set it on each child control that you want mirrored.

Owner draw is not supported when Form.RightToLeftLayout is set to Yes. The owner draw events will still occur, but the behavior of any code you author in these events is not defined. Additionally, Control.BackgroundImage, Form.Opacity, Form.TransparencyKey, and the painting events are not supported.

The Form.RightToLeftLayout and Control.RightToLeft properties cause the following Win32 API window styles to be set:

• When Control.RightToLeft is set to Yes and Form.RightToLeftLayout is set to true, Windows Forms sets the WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL window style, and removes the WS_EX_RIGHT and WS_EX_RTLREADING styles.

• When Control.RightToLeft is set to Yes but Form.RightToLeftLayout is set to No, Windows Forms sets the WS_EX_RIGHT and WS_EX_RTLREADING window styles.

Changing the value of this property raises the Form.RightToLeftLayoutChanged event.

For more information about globalization issues, see Best Practices for Developing World-Ready Applications.