Why do report layouts in VFP9 need wider field/expression controls than in VFP8 and earlier?

A common question about running reports created in Visual FoxPro 8.0 (and earlier) in VFP9 is “Why do I have to make my field/expression controls slightly bigger to avoid having my data truncated in the report output?”.

The glib answer is that, when SET REPORTBEHAVIOR 90, vfp9 uses GDI+ to render text instead of regular GDI. GDI+ requires a little more space to render the same text string than GDI.

If you’re happy with that answer (which is essentially “Just because!”) then great. No need to read further.

If you’re interested in exactly why GDI+ needs to allow more space when rendering text, then check out this: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=307208. It’s pretty interesting.

Update 16-June-2006: This related blog post Text Mess in .NET by Wesner Moise is also interesting.