Internal scaleX is negative and can't be reset

Question

If you like bizarro problems, here's one for you. I'm in the process of converting an application built on Sprites into an MXML app built with UIComponents. Most of my views share a common class. One of those is showing the bizarre behavior of showing up flipped on the X axis. I put in a breakpoint, and after the component gets added to the stage, its internal scaleX property is set to -1. When I say internal property, I mean one of those marked with a $ in the variables panel. Both the scaleX and _scaleX properties show 1, but the $scaleX property shows -1. I overrode the component's setter for scaleX, and it never gets called. The component is evidently starting with the negative value of its default value of 1.
Here's where it gets fun. If I set the scaleX to .09, the scaleX and _scaleX properties reflect this, but the internal property is set to -.08999. I know that the discrepancy in the decimal is due to floating point numbers, but I am flummoxed by the fact that the value I entered is getting reversed and set to a negative. Of course, this gives me a workaround. I can set the scaleX to -1, which makes $scaleX set to 1.
Does anyone have an explanation, or better yet a solution to this incredibly bizarre problem? Mucho kudos to you if you do.
One possible hint (or red herring) is that I have encountered a similar problem with the visible property on a separate component. The $visible property didn't match up with visible or _visible. The cause of the problem was putting a UIComponent into a Sprite. Changing the parent to a UIComponent fixed that oddness. However, I've checked, double-checked, and triple-checked that the display list containing this component is made of UIComponents up to the WindowedApplication root file.
So tell me; why is my scaleX the opposite of what I set it to on this one component?

Answer 1

I'm seeing this same behavior. I have a Flex 4.5 application that is internationalized for right-to-left languages. I have a SWFLoader that I manually set the layoutDirection property to "ltr". If I change the language to Arabic, on the first showing, everything displays properly. If I switch it back to English, everything displays correctly - except for the content in the SWFLoader (Bitmap). The content is flipped on the x-axis. A breakpoint reveals the values for layoutDirection is still properly set to "ltr", the scaleX is 1, but the $scaleX value is -1.
I tried a fix similar to what turbidity tried... something like this (extending SWFLoader):
override public function set scaleX( value:Number ):void
     if( mx_internal::$scaleX < 0 )
          super.scaleX = -value;
     else
          super.scaleX = value;
The above snippet just renders the SWFLoader blank. With the layoutDirection explicitly set to "ltr", I would have to think this is a framework bug somewhere. Just not sure what a good workaround is yet.