Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

12.1.5 Label Alignment

Within the boundaries of a Label widget or gadget, the text or image that is displayed can be left justified, right

justified, or centered. The alignment depends on the value of the XmN-alignment resource, which can have one of

the following values:

XmALIGNMENT_BEGINNING

XmALIGNMENT_END

XmALIGNMENT_CENTER

The default value is XmALIGNMENT_CENTER, which causes the text or pixmap to be centered vertically and

horizontally within the widget or gadget. The XmALIGNMENT_BEGINNING and XmALIGNMENT_END values refer

to the left and right edges of the widget or gadget when the value for XmNstringDirection is set to

XmSTRING_DIRECTION_L_TO_R. If the text used within a Label is read from left−to−right (the default), the

beginning of the string is on the left. However, if the text used is read from right−to−left, the alignment values are

inverted, as should be the value for XmNstringDirection. These values also apply to Labels that display

pixmaps.

If you have a set of Labels that are associated with strings of text that are right justified, all of the Labels should use

the same alignment and string direction settings for consistency. One way to handle this situation is to set the

resources universally (as a class−based resource) for all Labels and subclasses of Labels. For example, if your

application is written for a language that displays text from right−to−left, you may choose to have the following lines

in the application defaults file:

*XmLabel.stringDirection: string_direction_r_to_l ...