PRB: Text in Controls Are Clipped on Chinese/Korean Windows

ID: Q198875

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98

SYMPTOMS

When an application is running on Simplified/Traditional Chinese or Korean Windows 95/98, the text with San Serif font in a dialog box/control is clipped. The English version of Microsoft Publisher appears to have the same problem.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because the dialog box units are calculated based upon the system font (which is Chinese font); however, the font used in the dialog box is San Serif. This inconsistent matching causes the incorrect sizing of the dialog box/control.

RESOLUTION

Microsoft suggests that developers design their dialog boxes based on the largest font. The edit control is the only control that can automatically lay out the size of the control.

For additional information about the edit control, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q124315 HOWTO: Calculate the Height of Edit Control to Resize It

For other controls including buttons, developers must use a try/fail method. There is no automatic way to do this, unfortunately.

Developers should make their control/buttons as large as possible, although this may not produce the best appearance on English Windows. There is no definite solution, but developers could try and make adjustments for each case. Applications can call the GetSystemMetrics function to retrieve various system metrics (widths and heights of display elements), including the size of the buttons, with such parameters as SM_CXEDGE and SM_CYEDGE, which return Dimensions, in pixels. With these values, applications should set the font/size.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbWinOS95 kbWinOS98
Version : WINDOWS:95,98
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb