PM Controls are windows which are provided as part of the PM system. PM controls are used by applications to carry out simple input and output tasks (such as simple data entry, and choice selection).
PM Controls are bidi-aware windows which support bidirectional attributes and status. Thus they are sensitive to the various settings in the bidi attributes and bidi status and take actions accordingly. For example, PM controls support the 'window orientation' bidi attribute by formatting and displaying themselves according to the current orientation setting. Another example is their awareness to the active keyboard layer, especially in windows that process text input, such as the single-line Entry Field (SLE).
By using the bidi-aware PM controls, applications can achieve high degree of bidirectional support, since many tasks that are specific to bidirectional support, are provided "automatically" by the controls, on behalf of the application. In other words, as PM controls relieve the application from implementing code for routine and simple tasks (such as text input), they also relieve the application (to an extent), from dealing with specific bidirectional processing required for these tasks.