[RESOLVED] Coping with different length strings

What is the best way to cope with putting things on forms that might have widely different lengths.

For example, I have a form that has a series of labels along the top with descriptions next to them.

One of the label's captions is 'Location'. The descriptive text that goes next to it might say 'The Green Man' or it might say 'Behind Warehouse 3 on the Southern Industrial Estate'.

I have limited space. How can I let readers see all the text? I don't really want to use text boxes if I can help it but, if I must ...

I guess I can set the textbox to be flat etc so it doesn't look as if it is there ... but is there a control I can use that will only get scroll bars if the content is too big.

Thanks for any help.

I use textboxes in the way you describe for labels on occasion when faced with a situation similar to yours.

Just remember to set the TabStop to False and I usually put SendKeys "{tab}" in the Gotfocus event to prevent a blinking cursor from ever showing up.

you can use a textbox - with horz scrollbar.. make the bg color of it the same as the form.. remove the border.. and set Locked = true

OR

set the tooltip of your label to the same thing as the value.
then change the caption to "whatever goes here....." showin there is more

code to "clip text"
set your form to scalemode Pixels (if you leave it twips you'll just have to make the number higher)

VB Code:

Private Declare Function DrawText Lib "user32.dll" Alias "DrawTextA" (ByVal hDC As Long, ByVal lpStr As String, ByVal nCount As Long, ByRef lpRect As RECT, ByVal wFormat As Long) As Long
 
Private Type RECT
    Left As Long
    Top As Long
    Right As Long
    Bottom As Long
End Type
 
Private Const DT_MODIFYSTRING As Long = &H10000
Private Const DT_END_ELLIPSIS As Long = &H8000&
Private Const DT_PATH_ELLIPSIS As Long = &H4000&
Public Function EllipseText(ByVal sTxt As String, ByVal nMaxWidth As Long, frm As Form, Optional ByVal IsPath As Boolean) As String
    Dim nFlags As Long
    Dim r As RECT
    
    nFlags = DT_MODIFYSTRING + _
             IIf(IsPath, DT_PATH_ELLIPSIS, DT_END_ELLIPSIS)
    r.Right = frm.ScaleX(nMaxWidth, frm.ScaleMode, vbPixels)
    Call DrawText(frm.hDC, sTxt, Len(sTxt), r, nFlags)
    EllipseText = sTxt
End Function

usage

VB Code:

Label1.ToolTipText = NewKey
    Label1.Caption = EllipseText(NewKey, 50, Me)

Thanks very much for your replies.