PRB: Label Grows Wider When AutoSize and WordWrap Are True

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Start a new project. On Form1 (the default form), place a Label control (Label1) and a command button (Command1).
2. Select the Label1 control on the form and press the F4 key to see the Properties window. Set WordWrap and AutoSize to True, and in order to see the problem clearly, set the BorderStyle to 1 (Fixed - Single). Set the Width to 1200 Twips (twips is the default ScaleMode).
3. Double-click the Command1 button. Place the following code in the Command1_Click event procedure:

         MsgBox "Start Width=" & Label1.Width
         For i = 1 To 50
            Label1.Caption = Label1.Caption & "This is my Text "
         Next
         MsgBox "Final Width=" & Label1.Width
   						

4. Run the program by pressing the F5 key. Press the Command1 to see that the width of Label1 increases as more text is added to the Caption. In Visual Basic version 3.0, the width increases with each successive addition of text. In Visual Basic version 4.0, the width of the label increases once but does not continue to grow.

Example Workaround

To prevent the width from becoming excessively large, you can use this code:

   MsgBox "Start Width=" & Label1.Width
   OriginalWidth = Label1.Width
   Label1.Visible = False
   For i = 1 To 50
      Label1.Caption = Label1.Caption & "This is my Text "
   Next
   Label1.Width = OriginalWidth
   Label1.Visible = True
   MsgBox "Final Width=" & Label1.Width
				

This workaround suitable only for solving the large increases in label width that are seen in version 3.0. The AutoSize feature will probably cause the final width of the control to be slightly larger than the original width of the label as more text is added, even when the width is explicitly set. The differences between the initial and final widths of the control after text is added to the caption will depend on the content of the new caption and the font characteristics.

By setting the AutoSize property of the label to False before setting the label width back, the original width can be obtained. However, this will result in text being truncated.