Israeli laptop - data in Kirix running right-to-left !

[yonikarmi]

I've been using Kirix Strata for the last couple of years in the UK, but am now looking to set up a business based in Israel, in which I was hoping Strata would play a key part. To that purpose I bought a powerful Dell laptop in Israel. The operating system is Windows 7 Professional (English) 64-bit. I have Office 2010 Professional (Hebrew) installed and that works fine. I've installed a couple of non-Microsoft programmes that are in English only and which also work fine.

However Kirix Strata is proving a problem. Everything is a mirror image of what Kirix normally looks like, apart from the wording within menus, toolbars and panels where the English runs correctly from left-to-right. In a table, both the fieldnames and all data fields go from right-to-left. Perversely, Hebrew text runs from left-to-right. It all leaves me feeling dizzy. I've tried changing keyboard and system locale settings within Control Panel to no avail. One other point of note is that the Kirix browser window comes up completely black, although the cursor does detect hyperlinks, so something is lurking behind the darkness.

Ironically on a UK machine, Kirix works well on Hebrew text within Wide Character fields.

Basically, I'm stumped, so any suggestions would be very welcome.

[yonikarmi]

Good news. Following a suggestion from Ken, I conducted a more thorough testing of where the problem might lie. I had previously removed the default Hebrew keyboard setting, but that didn't affect the problem. I wrongly assumed that something was 'hardcoded' into the Israeli computer, but that isn't the case. What actually triggers the problem is the settings for 'Date, Time and Number Formats'.

In Windows 7 and Vista, open Control Panel and select 'Clock, Language and Region'. Then select 'Change the time, date or number format'. A dialog box opens and the first tab is headed 'Formats'. At the top, I adjusted the Format setting from Hebrew(Israel) to English(UK). This automatically applies a set of formats to date, time, numbers and currency. It also caused Kirix Strata to work correctly !

This finding will be of benefit to users of Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu. Initially I was thrown by the extent to which Kirix Strata went out of kilter, eg. black browser screen, Relationships don't work, the Query Builder doesn't work and all data and field-headings appear in mirror image. But assumptions are dangerous and systematic, patient testing (even if something appears unlikely) is a good thing.