Question

This seemed like an easy thing to do. I just wanted to pop up a text window and display two columns of data — a description on the left side and a corresponding value displayed on the right side. I haven’t worked with Forms much so I just grabbed the first control that seemed appropriate, a TextBox. I thought using tabs would be an easy way to create the second column, but I discovered things just don’t work that well.

There seems to be two problems with the way I tried to do this (see below). First, I read on numerous websites that the MeasureString function isn’t very precise due to how complex fonts are, with kerning issues and all. The second is that I have no idea what the TextBox control is using as its StringFormat underneath.

Anyway, the result is that I invariably end up with items in the right column that are off by a tab. I suppose I could roll my own text window and do everything myself, but gee, isn’t there a simple way to do this?

    TextBox textBox    = new TextBox();     textBox.Font       = new Font('Calibri', 11);     textBox.Dock       = DockStyle.Fill;     textBox.Multiline  = true;     textBox.WordWrap   = false;     textBox.ScrollBars = ScrollBars.Vertical;      Form form            = new Form();     form.Text            = 'Recipe';     form.Size            = new Size(400, 600);     form.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.Sizable;     form.StartPosition   = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen;     form.Controls.Add(textBox);      Graphics g = form.CreateGraphics();      float targetWidth = 230;      foreach (PropertyInfo property in properties)     {         string text = String.Format('{0}:\t', Description);          while (g.MeasureString(text,textBox.Font).Width < targetWidth)             text += '\t';          textBox.AppendText(text + value.ToString() + '\n');     }      g.Dispose();     form.ShowDialog(); 

Answer 1

If you want, you can translate this VB.Net code to C#. The theory here is that you change the size of a tab in the control.

Private Declare Function SendMessage _   Lib 'user32' Alias 'SendMessageA' _   (ByVal handle As IntPtr, ByVal wMsg As Integer, _   ByVal wParam As Integer, ByRef lParam As Integer) As Integer   Private Sub SetTabStops(ByVal ctlTextBox As TextBox)    Const EM_SETTABSTOPS As Integer = &HCBS    Dim tabs() As Integer = {20, 40, 80}    SendMessage(ctlTextBox.Handle, EM_SETTABSTOPS, _     tabs.Length, tabs(0))  End Sub 

I converted a version to C# for you, too. Tested and working in VS2005.

Add this using statement to your form:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices; 

Put this right after the class declaration:

    private const int EM_SETTABSTOPS = 0x00CB;     [DllImport('User32.dll', CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]     public static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr h, int msg, int wParam, int[] lParam); 

Call this method when you want to set the tabstops:

    private void SetTabStops(TextBox ctlTextBox)     {         const int EM_SETTABSTOPS = 203;         int[] tabs = { 100, 40, 80 };         SendMessage(textBox1.Handle, EM_SETTABSTOPS, tabs.Length, tabs);     } 

To use it, here is all I did:

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         SetTabStops(textBox1);          textBox1.Text = 'Hi\tWorld';     }