Thanks JD. It's really weird about MS. They have such a strong presence here in Israel. A lot of MS development has and is being done here, so it really makes no sense. I'm not sure if the restrictions are from the US or Israel, but it makes things kind of frustrating at times. It could be that is purely a commercial issue, trying to force people to buy from local dealers instead of on the Net.
I tried again last night to get an evaluation copy on the Net and still hit the same wall. I don't want to buy any of them, I just want to see how or if they handle Globalization/Localization and RightToLeft. Right now I'm handling all of that on my own, but I'm beating myself to death with it. At least 50% of my code is workarounds and has nothing to do with the actual functioning of the programs. I do try my best to make it reusable, but with limited success.
Mirroring a form for RightToLeft was easy enough, but getting it to work with Lazarus was really shooting in the dark. I finally have a couple of ways to do it, but the workaround forced me to find workarounds to hide the problems they create.
At present, Lazarus does not approach RightToLeft for Windows according to MS guidelines so it makes things a bit tough. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb688110.aspx (This is a very good one to read)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb688119 (This is only RightToLeft)