hello folks,
we have been developing several .NET-based windows forms applications during
the last two years. there are two mysterious display problems that we have
encountered so far but have been unable to find any information about:
1. distorted fonts. when placing label controls on forms or setting form or
grid captions we often notice that the label or title text is stretched out
in the left part, displays correctly in the middle part, and is compressed in
the right part. eg a grid title like "Order Details Information" contains two
pixels spacing between the letters in "Order", is correctly spaced in the
word "Details", and most of the letters in the right part of "Information"
would touch each other with no separating pixel between them. it almost looks
as if the spacing is calculated in a degressing fashion from left to right.
is this a known problem? has anyone encountered this before? could it be
related to a certain display driver or graphics adapter model? i can provide
a screenshot if needed to display the distortion.
2. incorrectly sized forms and message boxes. there is an even stranger
problem, that windows forms and message boxes are incorrectly sized if they
belong to a .NET application. this problem may occur as early as at the end
of the .NET Framework installation, when the "Installation Finished" screen
gets clipped in height so that the lower part of the window is invisible. MSI
setup packages generated with .NET may also be reduced in height so that the
buttons like "Next >" only display their upper border. on the other hand
message boxes or forms may be enlarged in either width or height, and cannot
be resized. MinimumWidth and MinimumHeight properties are no longer honored.
it appears as if the window size is determined by the very first window that
is displayed by a .NET application, and all windows that are created after
that have the same size, or at least the same width or height. thus we
suspect that some internal .NET data structures buffer the settings of the
first window and incorrectly apply them to all subsequent windows. this is
not consistent, but rather happens on only some pc's. we have not yet been
able to determine a common component or setting among the affected machines.
again, the same questions as in 1.
any help or insight is appreciated.
TIA,
olli krollmann, mcse2000
krollmann software
