Bidirectional support options

Use the Bidirectional support options page to specify bidirectional (Bidi) text preferences for the administrative console.

Bidirectional support means that text is supported going in both directions for different types of alphabets. WebSphere® Application Server presents Bidi text using left-to-right (LTR) orientation in most languages. However, when Bidi text is used as part of mixed Bidi and Latin text, for example, the preferred orientation is right-to-left (RTL).

For text entry fields, this means that the cursor is placed on one side and moves to the other side as characters are typed in an RTL alphabet, such as Hebrew or Arabic.

Bidi support helps to maintain visual structure in complex fields, such as file paths, emails, URLs and Xpaths.

If you select Enable bidirectional support for all users under Global Preferences, any change made affects all users. Note that if you select this option that Enable bidirectional support for this user under Current® User Preferences is automatically selected also. However, if you only select Enable bidirectional support for this user, any changes made only affect the user that is currently logged in.

To view this administrative console page, click Environment > Console preferences > Bidirectional support options.

Enable bidirectional support for all users

Select this choice to enable bidirectional support for all users.

Information Value
Default false

Default text direction for all users

Select one of the options on this menu to indicate which direction the text should go for all users.

The default text direction is left-to-right. This is the natural base text direction for most languages, including European, Asian and Indic languages

If you select right-to-left, this is the natural base text direction for languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu and Farsi.

If you select contextual, the base text direction is set according to the first strong character. This is an appropriate choice when at the time of setting the base direction, the main language of the string is not yet known.

Information Value
Default LTR

Enable bidirectional support for this user

Select one of the options in this menu to indicate which direction the text should go for only the user currently logged in.

Information Value
Default false

Text direction for this user

The default text direction is left-to-right. This is the natural base text direction for most languages, including European, Asian and Indic languages

If you select right-to-left, this is the natural base text direction for languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu and Farsi.

If you select contextual, the base text direction is set according to the first strong character. This is an appropriate choice when at the time of setting the base direction, the main language of the string is not yet known.

Information Value
Default LTR