Hmm. Am I just slow or am I seeing a bug? Looking at the latest version 24.6.0. Seems to me that convertBackToPresentation is ignored when calling setBean: The BindingImpl.setBean(bean) (line 2358) method calls BindingImpl.initFieldValue(bean, writeBackChangedValues=true) (line 2372).
The BindingImpl.initFieldValue methods ignores convertBackToPresentation. Why is line 1535 not if (writeBackChangedValues && convertBackToPresentation && setter != null && !readOnly)?
Also, aesthetically a little odd that so many other properties are passed into BindingImpl via the Builder but convertBackToPresentation is an exception, and has to get called after BindingBuilder.bind(getter, setter).
I wandered over to the very interesting RFC: Moving towards validators in fields - #25 by Leif. I am fully in the “Displaying data should never change data” camp and also surprised that convertBackToPresentation does not default to false.